Kant's Empirical Realism (Oxford Philosophical Monographs)

Kant's Empirical Realism PAUL ABELA

CLARENDON PRESS . OXFORD

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship,

and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar t:s Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi

Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

© Paul Abela 2002 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,. stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction

outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above Y Oll must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Abela, Paul. Kant's empirical realism/Paul Abela. p. cm. - (Oxford philosophical monographs) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Realism. I. Title. II. Series. B2799.R35 A24 2001 193-dc21 2001039745 ISBN 0-19-924274-7 (alk. paper) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Hope Services (Abingdon) Ltd. Printed in Great Britain

on acid-free paper by T. J. International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall

For Heather

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is about Kant's empirical realism. The inspiration for the book began with my graduate work at Balliol College in the early I990S. As is the case with all ambitious students, I had hoped to solve many issues at a single stroke. I aspired to develop Kant's epistemological approach to empirical reality, and then use it to solve the contemporary debate between realists and anti-realists. As blind ambition gradually gave way to more modest goals, it became clear that my real interest lay with Kant's judgement-oriented approach to representation and the contribution this account might make to live issues in the realist/anti-realist debate. Although time and second thoughts have moved portions of this book in directions different from my doctoral research, the aim has remained constant: making good on Kant's claim that his epistemological formula delivers a robust form of realism at the empirical level. There are many people I would like to acknowledge for their help and support. Ralph Walker, my thesis supervisor during my D.Phil. at Oxford, offered important criticisms and helped keep the fundamental issues in sharp focus as I explored the labyrinth of the Critique. His patient and balanced approach always brought me back to the central themes. Although we disagree in some areas, I recognize now how many of the seeds he planted came to fruition in this book. To J. D. Trout and Bill Newton-Smith lowe a debt of gratitude for keeping the realism fires burning. For inspiring my interest in Kant, and his input on many issues in this book, I thank Gordon Nagel. D. L. C. Maclachlan's careful walk through the Critique many years ago has also left its mark. I would also like to express my gratitude to the first and second reviewers at OUP for their helpful insights and suggestions. Within my former department, I greatly benefited from the reading of my manuscript by

Vlll

J. D.

Preface and Acknowledgements

Trout and Andrew Cutrofello. I would also like to thank members of the Midwest group of the North American Kant Society for their helpful comments on a paper drawn from this work. I acknowledge with appreciation a summer research stipend from Loyola University at Chicago, and Acadia University's research funding during the final editing portion of the book. Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Heather, for her unflagging support and invaluable contributions to the editing of this research. From beginning to end, she has been there. Lastly, I am indebted to Isis for the canine company dnring the lonely hours at the keyboard .

.L

CONTENTS Note on the Texts Introduction

x I

1.

Empirical Realism and the Priority of Judgement

IS

2.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

8I

3. Judgement and the Manifold of Appearance

I42

4. Truth and the Constraint of Possible Experience

2I4

5. The Role ofthe Ideal of Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

250

Bibliography of Works Cited

294

Index

30I

NOTE ON THE TEXTS All references to the Critique of Pure Reason are in the standard 'w' and "B" form and refer to the Paul Guyer and Allen Wood translation. In a small number of places, where I thought it necessary, I have departed from the Guyer-Wood translation. In those cases, I have indicated the alteration in translation., References to the Prolegomena are in the standard form with the abbreviation Prot.-for example, Prol. 320. References to the Critique of Practical Reason are abbreviated CPR. References to the Critique of Judgement follow the standard form with the abbreviation C]. In order to keep the number of capitalized philosophical positions to a minimum, I have elected to capitalize only those positions unique to this book.

Introduction (I) "Realism with a wink" might best describe how even sympathetic interpreters of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason have viewed Kant's assertion that the broad transcendental idealist framework yields realism at the empirical level. There remains the common belief that Kamian appearances are mind dependent in a way that effectively excludes empirical realism from being accepted as a genuine form of realism. The word "appearance" (Erscheinung) itself is usually enough to scare off even the most well-intentioned realist. Add to this the idea that space and time are mere forms of intuition, and the (apparently) constructivist character of Kant's account of synthesis, and the door seems firmly closed to any realism worthy of the designation. This book challenges that prejudice. The main thesis of this work is that Kant's account of judgement, as developed in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, offers the reader a genuine realist programme. I have developed the argument for this claim under the title of empirical realism to draw attention to the positive content of Kant's account of theoretical knowledge. Whereas transcendental idealism identifies Kant's grand theory of knowledge, morality, and aesthetics, empirical realism is the title Kant invokes for the positive account of possible experience. Developing Kant's position under this rubric also aids in connecting many of Kant's arguments with contemporary concerns in the realist/anti-realist debates in epistemology and philosophy of language. Issues relating to perceptual content, truth, and reference stand at the heart of Kant's analysis of judgement. And it is judgement, its forms and conditions, that stands at the centre of the Kantian conception of the epistemological relation of mind and world.

2

Introduction

We know from Kant's own response to the first review of the Critique of Pure Reason1 that he rejected the non-realist interpretation of this work. His (at times caustic) comments in_,the Prolegomena offer unambiguous evidence of Kant's displeasure with the "higher-idealism" interpretation. 2 We also find corroboration in private correspondence of Kant's fear of misinterpretation. 3 In the second edition of the Critique Kant returns to his major work with these misrepresentations plainly in mind. 4 It is here that Kant is intent on focusing the reader's attention on important features of his approach, including: (1) revealiilg the bankrupt treatment of mental content that is shared by empirical idealists from Descartes to Hume, (2) positing reference requirements as a condition for fixing representational assignments, (3) laying bare the requirements of temporal (and spatial) structure and the schematized forms of judgement that make determinate temporal ordering possible, and (4) reinforcing the claim, in the Transcendental Dialectic, that the constraints enforced by the regulative notion of "possible experience" do not relegate empirical objects to the status of mind-dependent entities. Of course Kant's mere indignation with the non-realist interpretations is not itself evidence that Kant's analysis, even in the second edition, is genuinely realist. Some influential interpreters have suggested that Kant's rather animated 1 The notorious Feder-Garve review (Zugaben zu den Gottinger Anzeigen, 19 Jan. 1782). An English translation is available in Ralph Walker (ed.), The Real in the Ideal (New York: Garland, 1989). 2 As many commentators have noted, some of the distinctions in the Prolegomena (e.g. the distinction between judgements of perception and judgements of experience) are in important respects out of step with central themes of the second edition of the Critique (see H. Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983),148 ff. for a good treatment of the problems). Guyer takes the opposing view, seeing no serious break between the two (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 102). 3 See Kant's letter to Beck, 4 Dec. 1792. In translation in Kant: Philosophical Correspondence 1759-1799, ed. and trans. A. Zweig (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967). 4 This is most evident in the inclusion of the "Refutation of Idealism" and the reworking of the Transcendental Deduction.

Introduction

3

response to the.Berkeleian interpretation reveals a raw nerve. 5 No doubt one can develop a plausible ill terpretation of Kant's approach that situates it in an idealist and/or constructivist context. One need only invoke the common scheme/content dualist interpretation, in which the representation of objects is, in some basic sense, to be identified with a creative act of synthesis based on privately given data. The result of this approach leads to comments like M. Devitt's. He suggests that Kant's empirical realism should not be viewed as a form of realism because, to a degree, 'we create the world we live in'.6 On this reading, Kant's unique contribution to the history of epistemology is to be identified with the inclusion of the transcendental requirements of a priori categorial forms of judgement and a priori forms of intuition. The dualism of organizing scheme and informative content is the backdrop of this interpretative approach. In a very general way, we are encouraged to view empirical realism as a special kind of idealism.Kant is regarded as offering an analysis that merely adds formal features to the inherited epistemological framework, resulting in a form-buttressed version of empirical idealism. That this standard view is compelling attests, I believe, to the powerful grip empiricist epistemology continues to exert upon the interpretation of Kant's programme. A diagnosis of the effects of this image of epistemology is developed below. One of the central tasks of this book is to throw into relief how far removed from the received view Kant's alternative epistemic framework in fact is. As I read the Critique, one of its 5 See C. Turbayne, 'Kant's Refutation of Dogmatic Idealism', Philosophical Quarterly,s (I955). Strawson expresses similar scepticism, claiming that Kant 'is closer to Berkeley than he acknowledges' (The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' (London: Methuen, I966), 22). See G. Miller, 'Kant and Berkeley: The Alternative Theories', Kant-Studien, 64 (I973), for a critique of Turbayne's position. 6 Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I99I), 72. Some influential Kant scholars adopt a similar perspective. For a representative view, see Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, Part Four. Most contemporary realists regard the phenomenal/noumenal distinction in the ontological terms suggested by Strawson's reading. They therefore declare phenomenal realism the poor man's realism (see Simon Blackburn, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I984), 2IO ff.).

4

Introduction

principal aims is to shatter the image that frames the original epistemic situation in terms that privilege inner content and relegate considerations of empirical reference and truth to secondary status. A compelling realist interpretation of Kant's position should be consonant with Kant's expressed wish that the critical force of the Copernican Revolution be viewed as turning the pre-critical model of cognition on its head (B276). At the core of my reading of this task is an extended argument that seeks to establish how the epistemic priority Kant assigns to judgement alters the received pre-critical image of the cognitive relation between mind and nature. Kant is not advocating the mere grafting of formal structures onto the dominant 'mind-to-world' model of cognition favoured by the precritical (and much of the post-critical) model of cognition. It is my intention to show how the Kantian prioritization of judgement challenges the empiricist-dominated description of the original epistemic relation and sustains Kant's claims of realism at the empiricalleveF The position that emerges is one that is in step with many contemporary themes concerning the nature and interrelation meaning, and truth. It is my between the notions of contention that much of the contemporary attention directed against empiricist views in epistemology (McDowell's and Davidson's work in particular) is prefigured in Kant's own attack on the received tradition of his day. Concerns about the epistemological role of the given, the unintelligibility of radi7 My reading of Kant's challenge to the scheme/content framework that he inherits from the empiricist tradition may initially seem counter-intuitive. Kant is usually interpreted as the champion of scheme/content dualism: 'Thoughts without content are empty: intuitions without concepts are blind' (B7S), No doubt Kant is committed to there being two elements in experience, each with different roles. The relevant question concerns how we interpret the epistemological role he assigns to each. It is important to bear in mind that, contra the Humean tradition, intuitions are not equated with mere givenness. Even empirical intuitions are temporally and conceptually structured (Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception). The Kantian challenge to empirical idealism targets the view that the given can enter into an evidential or justificatory epistemic role sequestered from the activity of judgement. It is this prejudice (the "Myth of the Given") that unfortunately frames many interpretations of the Critique.

Introduction

5

cal scepticism, the requirement of reference as a condition for determinate representation, and the fundamental role of judgement and its conditions all point in the direction of a shared repudiation of the empirical idealist model of cognition. Of course there is the attendant interpretative danger that runs parallel to any attempt to invest historical works with contemporary concerns. For example, reading important Kantian themes in the crossfire between Davidson and Quine on the epistemological role of observation sentences or in the light of the debate between McDowell and Evans on conceptual and non-conceptual content is likely to yield a distorted interpretation of Kant's concerns. Aware of this risk, I have tried to keep the focus firmly on the Critique. Nonetheless, it is my contention that the realist dimension of Kant's work is obscured by an inherently empiricist bias in how we reconstruct Kant's description of both the problems he identifies as well as the solutions he proposes. Accordingly, drawing into the general discussion contemporary themes that prove helpful in locating the proper level of Kant's concerns is, I believe, fully warranted. These themes, as will become dear below, are particularly useful in interpreting the role of the Principles of the Analytic and the Refutation of Idealism. Before offering a brief survey of how the argument for the realist interpretation is to be developed, I would like to acknowledge a number of omissions from the following discussion. I will not be advancing a view on Kant's theory of science. The discussion of empirical realism will be restricted to the general epistemic dimensions of the Kantian approach. I will introduce Kant's views on the conceptual requirements necessary for scientific theory only in so far as they have a direct bearing on the transcendental arguments concerning the possibility of experience. 8

i

~

l

8 M. Friedman's excellent book Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I993) presents a powerful case for connecting Kant's transcendental idealism with Newtonian theoretical commitments. As is made clear below, I interpret Kant's analysis as targeting fundamental epistemological issues. This, of course, does not rule out a later connection to scientific concerns. Where the tension between these two approaches can be felt is in how the force of the Analogies is to be interpreted. Is knowledge of causal

6

Introduction

I have also excluded reference to Kant's use of the concept of the transcendental object. I profess to have found little evidence for an unambiguous interpretation of the role Kant assigns to this sporadically deployed concept. I do not believe there is much to be gained by introducing this notion, as it seems apparent that Kant never fully resolved the epistemic role he intended for it. As I am concerned chiefly with the question of how the priority of judgement as expressed in the Analytic of Principles makes a realist interpretation plausible, I will assume that the arguments deriving the role of the categories in the Transcendental Deduction arc sound. Portions of the Transcendental Deduction are introduced only in so far as they relate to issues concerning the role of objective reference as a condition necessary for the possibility of determinate mental content. The analysis of Kant's position will focus on how the categories are employed (Principles of the Analytic), rather than the question of their derivation. Finally, in order to keep this enterprise within acceptable limits, I have elected not to undertake the onerous task of identifying and discussing the multitude of competing contemporary versions of realism and anti-realism. That would be a book in itself. I take it for granted that it is reasonable and sensible to regard the following minimal description of realism as adequate for immediate purposes. Realism, at the empirical level, entails: (I) our statements about the world are rendered true or false by a mind-independent reality, (2) warranted belief is determined by truth-conditions, and (3) there are recognition-transcendent truths about the empirical world. 9 Getting empirical realism to conform to this minimal description of realism is a sufficiently challenging task. laws a necessary feature of the operation of human understanding? Much of the interpretation of the Second Analogy hangs on the resolution of this question. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of these issues. 9 This description is based loosely on Dllmmett's characterization of semantic realism: 'Realism I characterize as the belief that statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us' in 'Realism', in Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 146. It may be objected that semantic considerations

:auz

aazUJIi

IntroductIon

7

{2} The book proceeds as follows.

The text is divided into five chapters. These can be grouped asfol1ows. Chapter I offers a description of contemporary anti-realist interpretations of empirical realism and introduces the basic features of a realist counter-proposal. Chapters 2 and 3 taken together develop the account of representation contained in the Analytic of Principles. Chapters 4 and 5 detail the realist analysis in the context of major themes in the Dialectic. Chapter I begins with a brief discussion df why Kant's empirical realism is interpreted usually as a form of antirealism. I outline the basic contours of two dominant schools of interpretation, and show why both views naturally lead to anti-realist conclusions. The end of Section LI introduces five principles I consider to be defining aspects of empirical realism. These principles are shown to be incompatible with both anti-realist views. The principles are used in the remainder of the book asa general thread for the realist interpretation. Sections L2 and L3 are devoted to introducing the fundamental general features of my alternative interpretation. Section L2 establishes why the priority Kant assigns to judgement, and its conditions, as the basic epistemic unit should be seen as an attack not only on the transcendental realist epistemic framework (Leibniz) but also on the epistemic framework of empirical idealism (Descartes to Hume). The assault on empirical idealism is directed against the idea that mental content (the given, transcendental matter, or sensation) can be regarded as having direct evidential or information-bestowing relations to the body of Ollr beliefs. In Section L3 this attack are too foreign to the C,'itique, No doubt the disputed conceptions of the role of the principle of bivalence and the notions of recognition and manifestation are of course just below the surface in the above description. M.oreover, I grant that there is no shortage of other plausible descriptions (for two from opposing parts of the spectrum, see Devitt, Realism and Truth, and C. Wright, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I992)). I accept that the move to a semantic description shifts the ground slightly away from traditional metaphysical approaches. But, as Dummett is certainly not an advocate for realism, I believe that adopting his description avoids loading the dice in favour of the realist position. Moreover, I believe Dummett's work remains a defining contribution to the realist/anti-realist debate, regardless of one's views on the relative merits of the linguistic turn.

8

Introduction

on the received view is developed in a way that links the priority Kant assigns to judgement with contemporary attacks, by philosophers such as McDowell and Davidson, on the viability of the idea that non-conceptual content can enter into epistemological roles of informativeness or justification. Contemporary attacks on the" Myth of the Given" take centre stage in this discussion. The Kantian commitment to an immediate (unmittelbar) relation between thought and its object will be shown to have a surprisingly modern ring in this respect, building considerations of reference and truth directly into the original process of representati~n. Some themes from the Transcendental Deduction are canvassed in the context of these introductory remarks. In particular, the role of unity-inthe-object, a theme developed fully later in the Analogies, is introduced in the context of Kant's description of consciousness in general as involving an irreducible intentional orientation. Chapters 2 and 3 detail the Priority-of-Judgement interpretation of Kant's Analytic of Principles. Chapter 2 offers a new reading of the role of the much neglected Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception. Chapter 3 brings the conditions-of-judgement approach to the Analogies. Section 2.I is devoted to liberating empirical realism from the grip of the standard view that frames the problem of representation in terms of what must be added to private deliverances (sensations) in order to secure objectively valid judgements. This preliminary discussion sets the stage for a clear appreciation of how judgement operates at the ground floor of representation, at the level of the emergence of empirical intuitions themselves. I suggest an alternative to the standard reading. I claim that Kant, by renouncing the epistemological framework of empirical idealism, effectively abandons the view that grants an epistemically privileged position to mental content. I argue that even descriptions of our internal states are not insulated from the contributions of judgement. I introduce contemporary approaches to conceptual and non-conceptual content (McDowell and Evans) as a vehicle for identifying the nature of Kant's challenge to the dominant empiricist approach. It is also shown that Kant's

Introduction

9

judgement-oriented approach challenges, in a rather modern manner, Cartesian-styled first-person accounts of content. Section 2.2 provides an account of the role of judgement in delivering empirical intuitions. Here we face the difficult task of establishing a role for judgement while resisting the view that the Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception, on their own, yield accessible determinate inner content independent of other (Analogies) contributions of judgement. There is, here, a tension (for the modern reader) in Kant's account. lO On the one hand, empirical intuitions arise in consciousness through an act(s) of judgemenL We have no prejudgemental engagement with perceptual content. Nonetheless, what judgement yields at this level is still not fully determinate. As we do not yet have the Analogies in play, the judgements that render extensive and intensive magnitude are not themselves object involving. We are thus presented with an account of judgement, and its product (empirical intuition), that operates without fully determinate temporal structure and objective relations (causal) in place. Although this tension is never fully laid to rest,11 we, nonetheless, need to address Kant's arguments that assign an important role to the activity of judgement in accounting for the structural features (extensive and intensive magnitudes) that are common to all empirical intuitions. This task generally is obscured or ignored by empiricist interpretations of the Critique. The second chapter concludes with a discussion of why the denial of an evidential connection between bare sensation (transcendental matter, noumenal input) and the body of our beliefs does not, in effect, 'cut [ourJselves off from reality'.u The reverse is shown to be the case. It is only after renouncing 10 Since at least the time of Wittgenstein's Anti-Private Language Argument we have, rightly, become suspicious of invoking the notion of judgement in contexts that are removed from procedures for verification. 11 Part of the strategy developed in this book is to supplant the subjec£ive/objective interpretation of representation with an indeterminatel determinate aceount. For previous attempts at highlighting this aspect of the Critique, see Graham Hird, Kant's Theory of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, I962) , and Gordon Nagel, The Structure of Experience (Chicago: Chicago University Press, I983). 12 Ralph Walker, 'Empirical Realism and Transcendental Anti-Realism: Part II,' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 57 (I983), I67.

10

Introduction

the 'common prejudice' (B768) that sensation mediates between belief and reality that we can be assured that inner experience is connected to an independent, external reality. In this context, Davidson's words might as well have been written for the Critique: 'In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but establish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.'13 The task of explicating the representational structures that render objective states of affairs possible is contained in the Analogies. These structures are examihed in Chapter 3. The guiding theme of the first section centres on viewing the Analogies as the primitive conditions necessary for the discrimination of events and objects. The broad thrust of the analysis is devoted to establishing how Kant develops the case for viewing the constraints in the manifold of the represented (manifold of appearances) as necessary conditions for determinate inner content. This line of interpretation connects with the preceding chapter. In Chapter 2 I discuss why the sensory mode of representation is an insufficient foundation for the determinate representation of object events and objects. Additional constraints are necessary in order to bind down temporal order such that it can produce unique representational assignments. The task of the Analogies is thus not to be understood as moving from subjective inner representations to corresponding external events and objects. The subjective pole of representation is an insufficient base to sustain inferences to objective states. I encourage a strong reading of this underdetermination predicament, connecting it with Kant's claim that we 'must derive the subjective sequence of apprehension from the objective sequence of appearances . . .' (B238). In this way, our representations are directly connected to the manifold of objects and events of experience from the start. The ineliminable role of objective reference serves as the focus for a response to Kant's fundamental question of the Second Analogy, 'what do I understand by the question, how 13 D. Davidson, 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', in Inquiries into' Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I984), I98.

---

Introduction

--

---

-

.....

~~~~~~-----

II

the manifold may be combined in the appearance itself (which is yet nothing in itself)?' (B236). The Refutation of Idealism is examined in Section 3.2. As this section is unique to the second edition of the Critique, added with the explicit intention of reaffirming the realist credentials of Kant's approach, I develop the discussion as an extension of the requirements of temporal structure, reference, and truth as found in the preceding sections of the Analogies. The argument is developed so as to target Kant's critical remarks against the broad epistemic framework in which non-conceptual content is prioritized over objectoriented considerations of reference and truth. Given the importance assigned to reference and truth, this section also includes a discussion of how the Kantian approach confronts the problems posed by the possibility of error and radical referential failure (scepticism). It is no cause for wonder that Kant's Refutation is often regarded as woefully lacking critical bite. The standard reading that merely grafts judgement onto the empiricist programme of course fails to find a compelling argument in the Refutation. If the relation between mind and world is mediated by the given, then we can never bridge the resulting gap between what is present to the mind and what is in the world. We can never, as Davidson remarks, swear our epistemic messengers to truthfulness. Kant, to his credit, recognizes that empirical idealism (and its attendant scepticism) is the logical terminus of this description of our epistemic predicament. 14 On the reading developed below, Kant's rather brief and often ridiculed 14 Modern philosophy of mind continues to wrestle with the underlying epistemological repercussions of the (frustratingly) intentional character of the mentaL Perhaps the lack of success at eliminating the intentional idiom points to a miscasting of our epistemic situation. The epistemological task since Descartes has centred on how we justify the link between belief and the world. This leads to the (misguided) hope that we might characterize the mental without reference to its intentional character. Perhaps it is the original bifurcation of content and reference that is the epistemic culprit. Although I do not develop the point, I am drawn to a parallel between Frege's conception of a pure language in which there must be a referent for every sense, and Kant's commitment to reference as a necessary feature of determinate inner content. Intuitions, like senses, are the (sensible) mode for expressing an objective referent.

12

Introduction

remarks on the important subjects of error and scepticism can be interpreted in a way that unites them powerfully under his analysis of judgement, its conditions, and its anti-sceptical consequences. Chapters 4 and 5 consider how the realist analysis can be integrated with the general force of the Dialectic. 1s Chapter 4 begins with a discussion explaining why we should resist interpreting Kant's arguments in the Antinomies as ruling out the realist option at the empirical level. It is shown that Kant's spirited defence against the threat of a general 'euthanasia of reason' (B434) is directed towards an ~ttack on the transcendental realist framework shared by both "competing" views in the antinomies. This section serves as a caution against conflating transcendental realism (a principle target of the Critique) with the viability of empirical realism. Section 4.2 involves a discussion of the connection between the nature of inquiry and the constraint it imposes on the conception of empirical truth. I argue here that, while the Kantian position does impose the restriction that legitimate knowledge claims must conform to the limits of possible experience, this experientially constrained conception of truth does not entail an assertion-condition account of warranted belief. This view runs very much against the stream of contemporary analysis, which is dominated by assertion-condition approaches to truth. Why is the challenge to these assertion-condition interpretations necessary? ' Contemporary assertion-condition accounts of truth and meaning take their inspiration from the view that understanding is best described in connection with the actual capacities we deploy in coming to know the world. Truthconditions are replaced by assertion-conditions on the grounds that they are not evidentially informed by the nature of human practice. As Michael Dummett remarks, 'this account can only be given in terms of the practical ability which the speaker displays in using sentences of the lan15 As the notion of the self is not of central concern, I have omitted a discussion of the Paralogisms. I concentrate instead on the general lessons of the Antinomies as well as the regulative role of the Ideas of Pure Reason,

Introduction guage' .16 Since Kant's account of truth is evidentially constrained by the bounds of possible experience, an assertioncondition interpretation may seem a natural fit. In fact, some anti-realists and pragmatists lay claim to Kant as at least an inspiration to their own projects. 1 ? After examining a number of variations on the assertioncondition analysis, it is demonstrated that Kant's experientially constrained conception of empirical truth, despite appearances, remains firmly within the realist, truthconditional fold. There are empirical truths that, while conforming to the basic structure of possible experience, remain outside the idiosyncratic contours of human inquiry. Moreover, the meaning of mental states, for Kant, is not mere shorthand for practical abilities of recognition and manifestation. I urge a rejection of the anti-realist identification of the Kantian notion of "possible experience" with an evidentially constrained conception of meaning conditions. In Chapter 5 I offer a realist interpretation of the transcendental principle of the systematicity of nature. At the core of this argument is a challenge to the methodological and pragmatist "as-if" analyses of the regulative employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason. I concede, of course, that Kant denies any constitutive role to the idea of treating nature as a unified whole. What I reject is the view that the requirement of systeinaticity is simply a heuristic device employed in order to expand and clarify the rough and patchy empirical knowledge supplied by the understanding. I present the view that the requirement for viewing nature as an intrinsically unified whole stands as a necessary condition for the possibility of comprehension. This correlates with the findings of Chapter 3 in which the requirement of unity-in-the-object, and unity-inthe-manifold-of-appearances as a whole, is presupposed as a condition for the operation of the understanding. The requirement of the systematicity of rational unity necessary for the 16 M. Dummett, 'What do I Know when I Know a Language', in The Seas of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), WI. 17 Putnam's Internal Realism of the 19808 explicitly invokes the Kantian framework. One can also see examples of the connection in the work of Peirce (see C. Misak, Truth and the End ofInquiry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I99I) ).

Introduction possibility of comprehension requires a corresponding real unity in nature, not merely a postulated unity. The regulative assumption of unity serves, therefore, as more than a mere aid for the further interrogation of nature. It stands as a condition for there being comprehensive knowledge of nature at all. Chapter 5 concludes with a brief survey of the governing five principles of empirical realism in defence of the (potentially) contentious exclusion of noumena sanctioned by my reading.

I

Empirical Realism and the Priority of Judgement A judgement, for me is not the comprehension of a thought, but the admission of its truth. (Frege)

LO.

INTRODUCTION

Transcendental idealism is Kant's gen~ral theory. The general theory frames a vast amount of material, spanning twenty yeats' work and all three Critiques. Like a grand mansion, it includes many rooms, housing Kant's treatment of knowledge, morality, and aesthetics. Empirical realism is one room in that mansion. This room contains Kant's analysis of the conditions necessary for knowledge of the familiar world of empirical objects. Empirical realism is seldom a topic of conversation even among Kant scholars. There are, 110 doubt, many reasons for this omission: a reluctance to stake too much 011 the realist designation; a desire to highlight the negative lessons of the Critique of Pure Reason by focusing on the boundary conditions for knowledge; or simply the routine of thinking about Kant's account of knowledge in terms of the general theory of transcendental idealism. This book begins with the presumption that we should take Kant's "empirical-realist" designation seriously. This does not mean departing from the prevailing theory of transcendental idealism. On the contrary, it means exploring why transcendental idealism yields realism at the empirical level.

I6

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

The first question that confronts any attempt to affirm the realist character of Kant's approach is the natural query "Is a realist interpretation of empirical realism even possible?" At first blush, this question may seem uninformative. Empirical realism is a form ofreatism by stipulation. But we know that, since the time of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, up to the present, Kant's realist credentials have rarely been accepted as legitimate. Whether it is the eighteenthcentury Feder-Garve "higher-idealism" charge, or the twentiethcentury Strawsonian dismissal of the Kantian "world of appearances", Kant's realism has seldom risen above critical suspicion. The usual suspects have been (empirical) idealism and phenomenalism. More recently, developments in epistemology and the philosophy of language have in fact pushed empirical realism into modern anti-realism. Stipulative paradoxes notwithstanding, this latter interpretation currently is thought to make the best sense of Kant's commitments to an experientially circumscribed account of empirical knowledge. In this chapter it is argued, contra this anti-realist backdrop, that the Kantian epistemological paradigm in fact promises a robust form of realism at the empirical level. I claim that substantial realist commitments underwrite the mere stipulative connection between modern realism and Kant's empirical realism. The argument in this chapter is developed in three stages: (I) a review of the two dominant anti-realist interpretations of Kant's account of experience, (2) a discussion of Kant's attack on the transcendental realist/empirical idealist epistemic paradigm, and (3) an overview of the new Priority-of-Judgement approach. The discussion of the contemporary anti-realist interpretations is intended to reveal how these "competing" views collectively impose a pattern of analysis that effectively banishes a realist reading of Kant's approach. I contend that these two major (and competing) contemporary anti-realist interpretations of the transcendental idealism/empirical realism framework are each wedded to a misleading description of the epistemological relation of mind and world. In the second section I correlate this shared interpretative framework with standard transcendental realist views: interpretative prejudices

r

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

17

I take Kant to be targeting. It is suggested that the priority Kant assigns to judgement as the basic epistemic unit is not fully recognized by either of these dominant views. The third section offers an extended review of the new direction that emerges with the rejection of the dominant view. Here I offer a sketch of the Priority-of-Judgement approach. The requirements of empirical truth and reference-central components of Kant's account of judgement-are introduced in the context of necessary conditions for the possibility of determinate inner content. This approach puts empirical realism squarely within the modern frame connecting mental content directly with the objects we take our beliefs to be about. The resulting Kantian approach is discussed in the light of similarities between Kant's own assault on the intelligibility of empirical idealism (Hume in particular) and contemporary attacks on aspects of empiricist epistemology (the "Myth of the Given" in particular).

1.1. EMPIRICAL REALISM: BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

The field of contemporary interpretation of empirical realism is dominated by two broad approaches. As a first approximation let us call these "Epistemic Humanism" and "Ultimate Realism". Epistemic humanizers characterize empirical realism in terms that emphasize the constitutive role rule-following and human practices play in the determination of objectively valid judgements. This approach is heavily influenced by verificationist and Wittgensteinian concerns. The broad canvass of these influences include anti-realists such as Dummett and Wright as well as pragmatists like Putnam (at least of the late 1980s and early 1990s). Central to this approach is the belief that understanding must be described in terms that refer to our actual capacities to recognize the conditions by means of which we determine the truth values of propositions. The God's-eye perspectivc--identified with realism-is firmly rejected. As Dummett remarks:

18

Empirical Realism/Priority of judgement

Realism I characterize as the belief that statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us. The anti-realist opposes to this the view that statements of the disputed class are to be understood only by reference to the sort of thing which we count as evidence for a statement of that class. 1

The evidentially unconstrained truth-conditions that realists invoke as the basis for understanding are dropped in favour of an evidentially constrained description of the process of understanding. Understanding, and the ability to manifest knowledge, are thus geared to practical engagements of recognition and manifestation. Within Kantian scholarship, L. Stevenson's interpretation is a representative example of this approach: Kant also realizes that what makes possible that objective validity which attaches to all judgements whatever cannot be a correspondence between our judgements and some objects or states of affairs transcending our knowledge, it can only he the rule-governed nature of our thoughts or assertions .... Kant's discussion of objective validity can now be seen to reveal an implicit commitment to what is these days called 'anti-realism'.2

The epistemic humanist stresses how the contours of human experience serve as the epistemic boundary conditions for the concepts of truth and knowledge. Understanding operates through the rule-governed character of our judgements. Knowledge of the world runs parallel to the constraints under which judgement operates. I label this broad anti-realist interpretative framework "Epistemic Humanism" in order to highlight the broadly manifestationist emphasis that is shared across competing formulations. 3 Dummett, 'Realism' in Truth and Other Enigmas, 146. Leslie Stevenson, 'Empirical Realism and Transcendental Anti-Realism: Part 1', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 57~(I983), 145. While Stevenson agrees with much of the anti-realist critique of realism, he does not go as far as Dummett's rejection of bivalence for all recognition transcendent statements. See Stevenson, 'Meaning, Assertion and Time', Australian Journal olPhilosophy, 66 (1988), 13-2.5. 3 It is important to recognize that among anti-realists there is no single agreed view. Even within the most recent and powerful school of anti-realists (semantic anti-realists) we are beginning to see the emergence of serious 1

2

r Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

I9

Admittedly, this reading of Kant's treatment of experience is appealing. Kant's explicit identification of knowledge of empirical reality with possible perception 'in accordance with the laws of empirical advance' (Bs:z.I) naturally encourages the identification of Kant's programme with contemporary attempts to humanize our concepts of truth and empirical knowledge. By taking seriously the constraints inquiry imposes, and building these constraints into our concepts of truth and knowledge, we capture, one might suggest, the priority Kant assigns to the conditions of experience as the basis for objectively valid judgements. After all, it is a fundamental feature of the Copernican revolution that 'the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time the conditions of the possibility the objects of experience. ' (BI 97)· Collectively, these interpretations are consonant with the general spirit that animates the critical project. The Copernican revolution certainly is infused with the goal of arriving at a new, human-centred image of the cognitive relation between mind and nature. Recasting the notions of empirical truth and knowledge in conformity with the constraints of inquiry correctly locates the stress Kant places on the structure of experience as the fundamental basis for legitimate empirical assertions. As Kant states in the introduction to the Critique, the Copernican revolution heralds a comprehensive shift in epistemic perspective:

0/

Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something ... on this pre-supposition, come to nothing. Hence let us try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition. .. (Bxvi)

We should therefore expect, as anti-realist interpreters have identified correctly, a corresponding shift in the notions of reference, truth, and the subject-object relation compatible with the new epistemic commitments inherent in the Copernican differences. For a good discussion of the relevant issues, see Crispin Wright, 'Realism, Antirealism, Irrealism, Quasi-Realism', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 12 (I988), 25~49.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

20

model. Epistemological concerns overshadow ontological commitments: the 'proud name of an ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognitions of things in general ... must give way to the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding' (B303). The second broad approach is Ultimate Realism. It shares with Epistemic Humanism the idea that our grip on empirical truth is tied to the procedures and limits of human· practice. The ultimate realist therefore agrees that sentences do not have determinate truth-values independent of our capacity to determine these values. As R. Walker sugl?;ests: The things we say in everyday life, or in science, about the spatiotemporal world around us are true (if they are true at all) only of the world of appearances. But they can be true [only} of that world, and it is his recognition of this that qualifies Kant as (in his own terminology) an empirical realist. Truth-within-the-world-of-appearances does not demand correspondence with a noumenal reality; it is also not verification-transcendent. 4

Ultimate Realism is distinguished by what it adds to this antirealism. As we have seen, Epistemic Humanism grounds truth, reference, and ontological commitment exclusively within the bounds of human practice. The ultimate realist maintains that the intersubjective agreement that obtains within experience, as described by the anti-realist, demands some form of explanation. This explanation cannot itself be drawn from within empirical practices, current ontological commitments, or assertion conditions: This striking agreement demands explanation. Strictly speaking it does not require it, for one can always elect to leave anything unexplained, but it is generally and rightly thought reasonable to seek for explanations where one can. Now any explanation here will have to make reference to things as they are in themselves, for what is to be explained is itself a noumenal fact ... 5

Invoking a noumenal "explanation" for the noumenal "fact" of coherence at the empirical level has a long history within Kantian scholarship. It is generally associated with the "two4

Walker, 'Empirical Realism', 157.

5

Ibid. 173.

rI

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

2I

worlds" interpretation of transcendental idealism. 6 This view is rooted in considerations concerning Kant's notion of synthesis, married to a broadly constructivist interpretation of empirical knowledge. We can summarize the description of the epistemic situation that is thought to make this reading plausible as follows: (I) we have a great deal of intersubjective agreement in experience, (2) experience is restricted to appearances that are rendered in conformity with our forms of judgement and inturise to appearances is subjectition, (3) the synthesis that centred (private), (4) it can be assumed we share the basic conceptual categories for synthesis, (5) if there were not a common, pre-empirical given (transcendental matter), our shared categories would be insufficient to account for this shared experience, and (6) therefore there must be belief determining transcendental input. This low-level transcendental bare givenness explains the higher-order coherence of belief evident at the empirical level. I have entitled this position Ultimate Realism in order to draw attention to the epistemic priority it assigns to noumenal reality. A duplication of conceptual commitments arises. By invoking unknowable things-in-themselves as the conceptual ground for an explanation of the intersubjective unity evident at the empirical level, Ultimate Realism demands two different accounts of truth, reference, and ontological commitment. The first has already been discussed. This involves the inquiry-constrained conceptions of empirical truth, reference, and knowledge. The second, more important, set refers to noumenal realities that are radically independent of the context of experience. These noumenal "inputs" issue forth from nonmenal reality: the 6 Norman Kemp Smith, Peter Strawson, Terrence Wilkerson, and others share this In his more recent work, Strawson has softened his stance on this issue. He now offers two readings of transcendental idealism. On a new reading that stresses the noumenon as a negative concept, he acknowledges that Kant can deliver a robust form of realism at the empirical leveL His concern is that this may trivialize the doctrine of transcendental idealism: making it no more than the token view that 'we can know of things only what we can know of them'. See 'Sensibility, Understanding, and Synthesis', in E. Forster (ed.), Kant's Transcendental Deductions (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989), 73. See also 'The Problem of Realism and the A Priori', in P. Parrini (cd.), Kant and Contemporary Epistemology (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994).

22

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

fundamental reality. It is owing to their unknowable, but conceptually necessary, existence that the phenomenal world of empirical objects has unity. The inherent structure of transcendentally given matter supplies the basis for the intersubjective unity we enjoy at the empirical level. As Walker claims, 'it is only if things in themselves affect each of us in a systematically similar fashion that we can share a phenomenal world in common'? Appearances are, in an important sense, derivative projections or constructions created in the act of synthesizing privately given transcendental matter. Noumenal reality is the (per impossible) foot-stamping "real" reality. From the ultimate perspective of the noumenal world, empirical reality is even less than a poor dependent; it is, strictly speaking, false: The world of appearances is empirically real, and the standard of this empirical reality is the coherence we have been considering; but that world is also transcendentally ideal, which is to say that from a more ultimate standpoint it is a construction which our minds effect. Viewed from this more ultimate standpoint genuine reality-transcendental reality-is the noumenal world of things as they are in themselves, metaphysically independent of our knowing minds and in principle unknowable to us; and from this more ultimate standpoint truth consists in correspondence with that reality .... in this sense virtually all of our everyday beliefs must be in Kant's opinion false. For they concern things that are in space and time, and Kant holds that the really real world is not spatial or temporal. (emphasis added except final one)8

We can summarize the commitments of Ultimate Realism as follows: (I) the existence of noumenal reality, (2) noumenal reality has internal relations that are recognition-transcendent (in the most extreme sense possible), and (3) noumenal reality has a belief-informing connection to our judgements about the empirical world. Taken together, Epistemic Humanism and Ultimate Realism demarcate the contours of contemporary analysis, crowding out the realist option. What we have seen is that the focus of the debate centres on whether anything should be added to the shared anti-realist formulation at the empirical level. Both par7 Ralph Walker, The Coherence Theory of Truth: Realism, Anti-Realism, Idealism (London: Routledge, I989), 77. 8 Walker, 'Empirical Realism', I61.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

23

ties agree that empirical realism is a form of anti-realism. With the battle lines thus drawn, a robust realist interpretation of empirical realism is precluded from the beginning. The following statement by Walker is a fitting expression of this bipartisan consensus: 'To put it in a way that makes it sound paradoxical, Kant's empirical realism is a form of anti-reaHsm.'9

r.r.r. Interpretative Charity

The anti-realist position that both epistemic humanizers and ultimate realists converge on should offer grounds for pause. The paradoxical nature of the resulting position suggests that something indeed has gone wrong here. As indicated above in the Introduction, there is no shortage of compelling prima facie evidence for denying that Kant viewed his position as what we would now label as anti-realism. Kant makes it clear throughout the Critique (emphasized rigorously in the second edition) that the transcendental idealist/empirical realist thesis is designed to refute any identification of empirical reality with constructivist programmes. Kant's direct attack on Berkeley's material idealism is intended to forestall interpretations of empirical realism that fall short of anything less than a robust commitment to the independent existence of empirical objects. The existence of empirical objects is not materially dependent on acts of human perception(s). As Kant suggests, empirical objects correspond 'to and [are] therefore also distinct from the cognition [of them]' (AI04). The presence and properties of objects, Kant maintains, must be treated as grounded 'in the object, i.e., regardless of any difference in the condition of the subject .. .' (BI42). The Refutation of Idealism is added to the second edition with the express purpose of highlighting Kant's proof of the existence of independent objects as a condition for determinate mental content. Inner sense demands the immediate experience of objects outside us, inner experience being 'possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me' (B275). 9

Ibid. I37.

I:

24

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

Again, in private correspondence, Kant asserts: 'For "representation" means a determination in us that we relate to something else.'l0 To this we can add Kant's general repudiation of the idea that the practical limits of experience--sensory thresholds and spatialltemporal proximity~double as limits on ontological commitment (B273, BS24) and his remarks concerning the determinacy of the past (BS23-4). Collectively, the force of these important themes casts a serious shadow over the initial plausibility of any anti-realist interpretation. On grounds of interpretative charity, as a provisional hypothesis, we should take Kant to mean what he says when he describes his account of experience in terms that are consonant with a bona fide form of realism. For immediate purposes, the first lesson to be drawn from the structure of the contemporary debate is a recognition of how the dominant interpretative framework effectively precludes any realist interpretation. When one prioritizes constructivist and phenomenological readings of Kant's account of experience, it becomes hard to see how full-blooded notions of empirical reference and truth can he smuggled back into the picture. If these latter features are not necessary for determinate mental content, we are likely to end up with no more than a formbuttressed version of empirical idealism: Berkeley with transcendental scaffolding. . In the task of developing a realist interpretation, we must depart from the oscillation evident in the epistemic humanist and ultimate realist debate. Realism within that frame of reference is a non-starter. The interpretative task thus settles on a re-evaluation of the Kantian position in a way that effectively liberates the analysis from the dominant interpretative framework. The remainder of this chapter is directed to the development, in broad outline, of a new interpretation of empirical realism that abandons the dominant anti-realist view. This challenge, directed against the model of cognition shared by both epistemic humanists and ultimate realists, constitutes the hard 10 Letter to]. S. Beck, 4 December 1792, as translated in Kant: Philosophical Correspondence 1759-1799, I98.

r

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

25

work of developing an alternative conception of the constitutive role of judgement. Questions like "What is Kant's model of the cognitive relation of mind and world?", "In what way does Kant move beyond the dominant view that retains the dualism of uninterpreted content confronting and informing belief?" > and "How do we cash out the deliverances of the world in terms that privilege considerations of truth and reference over an insulated domain of determinate inner content?" all take centre stage. The fundamental and pressing question Kant himself poses in the Analogies, 'what do I understand by the question, how the manifold may be combined in the appearance itself' (B2 36), takes on new significance when we reject the dominant interpretative modeL These questions, and many more, constitute central framing issues that require an answer if a realist interpretation is 'to be made plausible. In the following two sections the structure of this new interpretation will be developed by outlining the new epistemic direction launched by the Copernican revolution. The following five principles are central guiding themes for this reconstruction:

Principle of Representation. All representation of objects relates directly to the activity of judgement. 2. Principle of Experience. Experience is directed, and restricted, to an inherently structured causal world. 3. Principle of Empirical Knowledge. Knowledge pertains exclusively to experience and its possible advance. 4. Principle of the Systematicity of Nature. The inherent and systematic causal relations of the world can transcend our idiosyncratic experience of them. 5. Anti-Scepticism Principle. The collective force of our beliefs about the empirical world cannot be radically false. L

This set of principles is at odds with both branches of the dominant interpretative framework. The fourth principle involves a recognition-transcendent concept of truth. This is antithetical to the thrust of the epistemic humanization model. Princples 3 and 5 directly challenge the ultimate realist commitment to a belief-constraining role for noumenal reality. Principles I and 2 highlight the central role of judgement, and

·1

r!

h

26

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

its conditions, as the basis for Kant's account of representation, denying any role for uninterpreted givenness. These principles collectively constitute the basis for a realist interpretation that is grounded in Kant's account of the conditions of cognition.

THE COMMON PREJUDICE: TRANSCENDENTAL REALISM

I,2.

The realist interpretation developed below is intended to challenge the interpretative hegemony that the dominant antirealist interpretation currently enjoys. To this end, it is necessary first to discuss why the contemporary framework fails to capture adequately the radical break with the transcendental realist image of cognition that Kant's judgement-oriented analysis is, by all rights, designed to displace.

1.2.I.

The Target: The Cartesian Epistemic Model

Transcendental realism is a term Kant generally reserves for the epistemic framework of pre-critical philosophy. Kant attaches the term to both the rationalist and the empiricist traditions of his day (B327). The hallmark of transcendental realism is a commitment to viewing knowledge claims as relating to objects as things-in-themselves. This involves a conception of knowledge in which the representation of reality is abstracted from the conditions that serve as the basis for the act of representation. Why Kant regards both wings of the transcendental realist epistemic approach (rationalism and empiricism) as guilty of this failure may seem rather puzzling. What is the epistemological charge that unites the disparate accounts of Leibniz and Hume under the rubric of transcendental realism/empirical idealism? The short answer is that Kant thinks, with good reason, that Leibniz and Hume remain wedded to a broad Cartesian view in which there can be a basic cognitive separation of sensuous ideas from corresponding ontological commitments. Kant labels the Cartesian view "problematic idealism" (B274). Here

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

27

the chief task of epistemology involves finding a secure bridge between mental content (ideas in the mind) and external reality (empirical objects in the world). In the case of Leibniz's rationalism, this separation takes the form of a prioritization of the intellectual over the sensible. Ideas are merely confused presentations of their intellectual correlates. Kant labels this view transcendental realism. 11 In the case of empirical idealists such as Berkeley and, Hume, we have "dogmatic idealism" (B274)' Here the hunt for a secure reference relation is repudiated altogether. The act of representation is entirely internal. The question of how the transcendental realist commitment to things-in-themselves unites these three positions merits deeper analysis. The idea that Leibniz is committed to a realm of things-inthemselves is fairly straightforward. Kant's assault on the Leibnizian position is directed against the view that the essential character of reality is intellectual. 12 The charge that 'Leibniz intellectualized the appearances' (B327) is levelled against Leibniz's rejection of any constitutive role for sensibility. Leibniz's rationalist framework divorces the sensible conditions of representation from the determination of the object, thus identifying the object of knowledge with a pure intellectual object. Spatial and temporal elements are non-essential features bound up with the confused character of sensuous representations. Genuine reality relates to pure, rational things-inthemselves. Temporal and spatial considerations are not thus authentic identity-determining elements. As Kant remarks, 'The intellectualist philosopher could not bear it that form should precede the things and determine their possibility .. .' (B3 2 3)· What the "thing-in-itself charge" amounts to in Leibniz's case is thus evident. The case against empiricism is much less 11 It is worth noting that Kant tends to use the transcendental realist label in two ways. At times lle uses it to describe rationalists like Leibniz. The foclls in these cases is on the prioritization of a realm of intellectual objects. At other times, Kant lIses the transcendental realist designation as shorthand for the broad transcendental realist/empirical idealist framework itself. Under this description, he includes both rationalists and empiricists. [2 See B3 2 O-S.

28

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

dear. In what way is the empirical idealism of Burne, for example, committed to a role for anything like a "thing-in-itself"? While Leibniz intellectualizes appearance, Kant charges the empiricist tradition with sensualizing the understanding. Concepts of substance, cause, mutual determination, necessity, and so on, as well as the forms of intuition, time and space, are treated as derivative notions. On this view we have immediate experience of ideas only. These are the objects of experience. They are primitively given. Experience of "external" objects is viewed as the product of an inner construction from given content. n Objectivity emerges 'from a subjective necessity arisen from frequent association in experience, which is subsequently falsely held to be objective, i.e., custom . . .' (BI27). So where is the role for a thing-in-itself here? The thing-initself of empirical idealism is the primitive givenness of mental content. Calling ideas "things-in-themselves" may seem odd, particularly given Berkeley's and Burne's insistence that the "beingness" of an idea is in the act of perception (esse ist percipi). I think Kant's point is simply to draw attention to the fact that empiricism, like rationalism, regards something as a selfgiven primitive. 14 The atomistic empiricism of pre-critical philosophy identifies the beginning of the epistemological story with individuated impressions and corresponding ideas. This, of course, seems like a comfortable place to locate the beginning of the beginning. As our sensory organs are the conduit for our engagement with the world, it is only natural to think that the individuated character of our beliefs should be tied to primitively given impressions. In Section 1.3 tbis empiricist prejudice will be examined in detail. For present purposes, what is important is Kant's claim that the empirical idealist approach shares with the rationalist a commitment to something that is outside the autonomy of 13 Owing to Locke's commitment to a transcendentally real substance, it is best to view Kant's empirical idealist label as attached primarily to Berkeley and Hume. 14 This makes sense of Kant's initially puzzling charge (BV.7 and CPR 54) that empirical idealists are committed to the thing-in-itself. Kant is simply pointing out that the empirical idealist views inner content as given independently of any cognitive contribution by the subject. Impressions are thus viewed as sensory primitives.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

29

judgement. It is this shared commitment that unites rationalism and empiricism under the "common prejudice" (B768). For the empirical idealist, mental content is the ultimate reality. For the rationalist version, it is pure intellectual objects. In both cases, there is a cognitive element that inhabits a domain estranged from the object-oriented nature of our mode of cognition. Why is Descartes's analysis (problematic idealism) relevant to understanding how Kant is positioning himself vis-a.-vis the dominant epistemological tradition? I have suggested that Kant believes that the transcendental realist framework has its roots in the epistemic framework initiated by Descartes. Let us call this framework the Cartesian Epistemlc Model (CEM). How does CEM frame the transcendental realist account? In general terms, Descartes's description of the epistemic setting operates on the assumption that we can separate the emergence of ioeas in the mind from (possible) outer objects in the world. The Meditations announces a powerful epistemological programme premissed, in large part, on the viability of this separation. The epistemic challenge naturally settles on finding some secure method for determining the objective validity and reference of these internal determinations: Can some ideas be clear and distinct? Could we be radically deceived? Would we know if we were? Might the existence of God offer a bridge between ideas and the world? And so on. The epistemological paradigm that Cartesianism enforces is dominated by the quest for an indubitable justification for the inference from inner ideas to the reality of outer objects. It is a testament to the power of this description of our epistemic situation that the dominant modern epistemological issues continue to be about induction, justification, and problems associated with scepticism: all features that can be tied back to Descartes's grand thought experiment. Descartes's solution to the problem is not particularly relevant for our purposes. Reference and truth are secured, but at a high price: a commitment to the existence of God and to his good nature. Regardless oEhow we may judge the success of Descartes's solution, the aspect most relevant to Kant's analysis is the general epistemic paradigm enforced by the Cartesian

30

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

image of our original situation: the epistemic and ontological gap between determinate inner representation (ideas in the mind) and independently existing outer objects in the world. The Cartesian epistemic model effectively cuts us off from immediate access to objects. What we experience directly are our own inner determinations: ideas in the mind, not objects in the world. CEM creates the epistemological framework in which reference to independently existing objects becomes problematic. As Kant states: Thus I cannot really perceive external things, but only infer their existence from my inner perception, insofar as I regard this as the effect of which something external is the proximate cause. But now the inference from a given effect to its determinate cause is always uncertain, since the effect can have arisen from more than one cause. Accordingly, in the relation of perception to its cause, it always remains doubtful whether this cause is internal or external, thus whether all so-called outer perceptions are not a mere play of our inner sense or whether they are related to actual external objects as their calise. (A368)

Fundamental for our purposes is Kant's assertion that the Cartesian framework enforces a mediated connection between given inner content and external reality. The subject has ideas, and only ideas, at her disposal. Perception reaches no further than the contents of the mind. The epistemic task thus entails finding a secure basis for inferences from given content to objective reality. Let us return to the question concerning how the Cartesian epistemic model relates to the transcendental realist framework. For our purposes, the Leibnizian half of this equation is not particularly relevant. What is important is the connection between Descartes's problematic idealism and Berkeley's and Bume's dogmatic idealism. Kant credits dogmatic idealism for pushing CEM to its (il)logical conclusion: It is really this transcendental realist who afterwards plays the empirical idealist; and after he has falsely presupposed about objects of the senses that if they are to exist they must have their existence in themselves even apart from sense, he finds that from this point of view all our representations of sense are insufficient to make their reality certain. (A369)

I...-.. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

~

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

}1

Problematic idealism, of course, does not deny the existence of external reality. The reference of internal ideas to external spatialltemporal objects is intelligible and, when warranted, fully justified. What Kant credits the dogmatic idealists with discerning is that, if one begins with the original bifurcation of content and reference, the very idea of reference to something independent of inner ideas becomes unintelligible: 'the notion of external existence, when taken for something specifically different from our perceptions, [is an] absurdity."5 The material the senses supply, as Jlume suggests, entails 'no notion of continued ~xistence, because they cannot operate beyond the extent, in which they really operate' .16 The intentional character of the mental has no place here. Kant accepts the logic of Hume's position: that, if the transcendental realist framework is employed as the basis for characterizing our initial epistemic situation, then, on the basis of the mediate character of the subject's experience, the very ideas of spatial externality and temporal extension must themselves fall victim to the basic reductivist trnth that all representations are internal (content) to the mind. As I-Iume confirms: 'That our senses offer not their impressions as the images of something distinct, or independent, and external, is evident: because they convey to us nothing but a single perception, and never give us the least intimation of any thing beyond."? Berkeley says much the same: 'When we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. But the mind, taking no notice of itself, is deluded to think it can and does conceive bodies existing unthought or without the mind."s What began, in Descartes, as an attempt to arrive at indubitable knowledge of the external world ends, ironically, with a denial of the possibility of any reference to independent reality.

15 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd. edn., ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, T989), bk. I, part IV, sect. II. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 George Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge, in The Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, ed. G. Warnock (London: William Collins Sons and Co., Ltd., 1972), Prin. 23.

32

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

We end up with a picture of our knowledge of the external world that is broadly constructive in character: a form of empirical idealism or phenomenalism in which the authority for asserting the existence of external objects is traced back ultimately to the primitive reality of inner determinations. CEM is thus the epistemological ground zero for more than Descartes's powerful thought experiment. It is (perhaps surprisingly) also the frame of reference for empiricism. We should view Kant's Copernican experiment as challen~ ging this deeply entrenched depiction of the fundamental epistemic situation. Thus, while Kant attacks Leibniz's rationalism and Hume's empiricism, the real epistemic villain is the transcendental realist framework itself. It is the pre-theoretic assumption that reality is given, independent of the conditions of judgement, that forms the primary target of Kant's attack.

r .2.2. Is Formalism Enough? An Ohject Lesson

A customary way of capturing Kant's response to the Cartesian frame is to emphasize the formal features that inform the Kantian prioritization of judgement and its conditions. In the Prolegomena Kant himself stresses this aspect of his approach. In response to the Berkeleyian identification, he proposes to replace the "transcendental idealism" designation with "formal idealism" .19 The stress on the formal speaks to what any decent undergraduate picks up first about the Critique: transcendental knowledge is knowledge of the a priori conditions that structure experience. As Kant states in the Introduction: 'I call all cognition transcendental that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori' (B2S). There simply can be no denying that formal features dominate Kant's response to the transcendental realist/empirical idealist framework. No sense can be made of the Critique without emphasizing this feature of Kant's approach. Chapters 2 and 3 offer a reading of how these formal structures operate in the 19

See also note at B5I9.

Empirical RealismjPriority of Judgement

33

Analytic of Principles. The synthetic a priori concepts would be impossible without an account of the formal features of intuition (pure forms of intuition) and the contribution of the forms of judgement. However, even after having acknowledged the role of the formal, an important interpretative question remains open. How does Kant's formalism alter the received Cartesian view? Might it be the case that there remains a danger of invoking formal features without fully recognizing how the conditions-ofjudgement approach alters the basic features of the epistemological picture? In other words, could one by focusing primarily on formal features at the same time fail adequately to register the scope of Kant's proposed break with the old epistemological framework? A good t.t;st case against which to measure this worry is the influential account offered by H. Allison in his defence of transcendental idea:1ism. Allison's otherwise instructive separation of the transcendental idealist and transcendental realist frameworks in the opening chapters of his Kant's Transcendental Idealis~ falls short, I believe, of entirely dispensing with the original bifurcation of mind and world that the Cartesian epistemic model encourages. At the heart of Allison's reading is the correct observation that Kant's account of synthesis introduces a priori formal features that are not themselves derived from experience. The forms of intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding are then interpreted as the key aspects of Kant's analysis that serve to distance empirical realism from its epistemic neighbours. Since empirical idealism does not assign a role to a pl'iori forms of intuition, or to categorial forms of judgement, it is therefore of no surprise that empiricism is committed to viewing sensations as standing outside the formal conditions of judgement. As Allison suggests: 'The key point ... is that Berkeley and Hume share with other transcendental realists a failure to recognize the role in human experience of a set of epistemic conditionsYo It is this omission that motivates Kant's earlier odd-sounding claim that sensations have the status of 20

\

I l

Allison, Kant"scTranscendentalldealism, I9.

b

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

. 34

things-in-themselves within the empiricist framework: a receptivity that is cognitively barren requires that the identity of the mental content delivered to the mind (impressions) be viewed as logically independent of the activity of judgement. The priority of the formal conditions of synthesis are thus viewed by Allison as insulating empirical realism from the constructivist and phenomenological models that empirical idealism introduces. Allison's sympathetic 'epistemic conditions' approach is intended to capture this unique component of Kant's analysis. Since empirical idealism denies any formal elements, Kant with justice maintains that'it fails to provide rules for the synthesis of objective reality. With no rules, there are no right or wrong judgements, and without these distinctions, no knowledge. It is because dogmatic idealism provides 'nothing a priori at [its] foundation' that Kant feels justified in arguing that it cannot secure a 'criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion' (Proi. 375). No doubt Allison is correct, for example, to highlight the built-in connection Kant establishes betwccn the formal structures of human cognition and the nature of empirical objects: 'the defining characteristic of [transcendental idealism] ... is that the cognitive structure of the human mind is viewed as the source of certain conditions which must be met by anything that is to be represented as an object' This connection is indeed crucial to Kant's explanation of the possibility of empirical knowledge. The forms of intuition and the role of judgement are constitutive features of objective representation. Allison concludes rightly that: the point to be emphasized is that this 'changed point of view' [Copernican turn] brings with it a radically new conception of an object. An object is now to be understood as whatever conforms to our knowledge, and this, as we have seen, means whatever conforms to the mind's conditions (both sensible and intellectual) for the representation of it as an object. This new conception of an object, which is the correlate of the conception of an epistemic condition, is the major outcome of Kant's so-called Copernican revolution. 22

Zl

Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 29.

22

Ibid. 30.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

35

Empirical idealists (Berkeley and Hume) , by prioritizing content, fail to locate the proper point of departure for epistemological analysis. They are guilty of failing to find the beginning of the beginning. Nonetheless, the Copernican challenge to the Cartesian epistemic model is intended to call into question more than the empiricist's denial of the role of a priori concepts and forms of intuition. If I am right, Kant is also challenging the deep-seated epistemic commitment to the idea of an information-bestowing connection between a self-authenticating sensible (sensation, intuition, or individuated practices) and the world. The priority Kant assigns to judgement is, on my view, intended to banish the idea of any epistemic intermediary between belief and the world. The details of that view are developed below. What I want to press here is the recognition that, even if we adopt the priority Allison rightly assigns to the formal features of Kant's transcendental idealism, the general constructivist paradigm may well remain in force: the subject synthesizing privately given transcendental matter and 'producing' objectively valid representations. The possibility that Kant is signalling more than a buttressed version of the constructivist paradigm is obscured by a focus on the formal. The worry is that the genuinely object-oriented nature of empirical judgements will take a back seat to the constructivist epistemic template. The appeal to formal features as the primary differentiating aspect of Kant's challenge may (unfortunately) serve to conceal the lingering presence of the Cartesian framework. 23

r

II I \

!!

l

23 R. Pippin's excellent book, Kant's Theory of Form (New Haven: Yale University Press, I982), is one of the best readings of the formal thrust of Kant's project. In the opening chapters Pippin grapples with the problems that arise for Kant's account of sensation given the priority Kant assigns to form. Pippin more than any other interpreter (in English) is aware of the tension between a bottom-up account of representation (from sensations to experience of objects) and the requirements of judgement as a condition for the "bottom" sensory representations. Unfortunately, Pippin does not push the issue far enough. He regards Kant as holding a number of (at times conflicting) views on the role of sensation. While I agree with Pippin that Kant does, at times, fall back into the old idiom of sensation as having a belief-constraining role, I think on the whole we find in Kant a decisive break with the bottom-up model.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement contend that Kant's challenge to the Cartesian epistemic model of cognition is greatly aided if we acknowledge that the Copernican experiment is designed also to challenge the view that the subject can enjoy determinate inner representation without the involvement of contemporaneous reference relations from the start. Judgement, for Kant, is not merely a mechanical process as the standard "cookie-cutter" and "sausage-grinder" images encourage-that is, transcendental matter in one end, objects and events out the other. 24 It is wrong to think of the act of representation in terms of a process of incorporating bare content into the frame of belief. Stressing the formal features of cognition does little to displace the overall epistemic framework. Thinking of Kant's account of representation as a kind of highly structured transcendental "DOS" connecting input with empirical concept application distorts the role Kant assigns to the object-oriented character of judgement. 25 We need to refashion 24 I am not, of course, suggesting that Allison is committed to such a view, although I do see how an emphasis on the formal can give aid and comfol:r for such a view. See Michael Devitt's Realism and Truth, 72-3, for a discussion that explicitly demonstrates some of these worries. 25 The importance of emphasizing the object-oriented character of percep,tion is not lost in modern empirical psychology. The Direct Theory of Perception, developed by J. J. Gibson and his followers, offers one example of a eritique of the empiricist template as it operates in empirical research on visual perception. A defining feature of Gibson's approach is the assertion that our knowledge of the world is not based on inferences from primitively given data to objective states of affairs. Gibsonians are rightly suspicious of the role assigned to stimulus inputs. No doubt we are stimulated causally by the environment. The worry concerns where we locate the notion of informativeness. Gibson argues that stimulation of retinal points, on its own, provides no information about the environment: 'Perceiving is an achievement of the individual, 110t an appearance in the theater of his consciousness. It is a keeping-intouch, an experiencing of things rather than a having of experiences. It involves awareness-of instead of awareness. It may be awareness of something in the environment or something in the observer or both at once, but there is no content of awareness independent of that of which one is aware', see J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, I979), 239. For Gibson, perception involves "information pick-up" from the optic array (patterns of stimulation involving various perceptual invariants that are object oriented). Our cognitive engagement with the world is thus direct (invoking objective relations between surfaces, textures, shading, occlusion, and so on) rather than inferential processing of lower-level sensory stimulations. I regard Gibson's attack on the role of the given as similar in spirit to Kant's own attack on the mediated epistemological relation between mind and world enforced by empiricism.

j .

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

I

I I

\

37

the interpretation of receptivity in a way that liberates it from the bottom-up model encouraged by empirical idealist models of mind. Stressing a priori formal features merely begins this redescription of receptivity: the redescription should terminate in refashioning receptivity such that it includes reference to an objective manifold (see Chapter 3). Allison's eagerness to assert the priority of an epistemic interpretation of Kant's project (two standpoints) over the traditional ontological reading (two worlds) creates a related second worry. In the (understandable) rush to challenge the "two-worlds" ontological interpretation, Allison's project also symbolizes the contemporary reluctance of post "two-world" interpreters to address questions concerning the required ontological commitments that operate at the empirical level. The second issue that emerges on the "epistemic-conditions" approach is a general undervaluing of the coequal status Kant assigns to the objective correlate of the unity of apperception, the 'connection of the manifold in the object .. .' (B238). Allison, more than any other contemporary interpreter, is responsible for rightly drawing our attention to the serious shortcomings of the "two-world" approach. Fundamental to this shift is a severing of reference relations between phenomenal and noumenal domains-transplanting the pseudo-causal relation between worlds with an epistemic relation between standpoints: a plea for ontological modesty in the face of the priority of epistemic conditions. Unfortunately, the empirical reference relation is also downplayed in this response. In divesting Kant of two ontologies (things in themselves and appearances) Allison invests in a thoroughly epistemic account of Kant's analysis of what it is for an empirical reference relation to obtain. Allison states: We are told that the characteristic activity of the understanding is to relate given representations (intuitions) to an object. This immediately gives rise to the question of what is meant by an object (Objekt), and we sec that it is defined simply as 'that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united'. This definition reflects Kant's 'Copernican revolution': first-order talk about objects is replaced by second-order talk about the conception of arl object, and the conditions of its conception (epistemic conditions).26 26

Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 145

!

38

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

Allison's suggestion that the central principle behind the Copernican experiment is an identification of objectivity with the conditions of human cognition no doubt correctly locates the epistemic hinge on which the Copernican revolution turns. The mistake comes in reducing this rich starting point to a narrow conception of the relation between mind and world. The coequal status Kant assigns to the role of the empirical object itself is obfuscated by the stress Allison places on the epistemic conditions of the subject. His awkward attempt at a "weighty" conception of the (empirical) object merely serves to highlight the difficulty in working within the constructivist framework. 27 Of course, Allison is justified in highlighting the humancentred nature of Kant's account of representation. The problem comes with a refusal to take the final step: extracting Kant's account from the (implicitly accepted) Cartesian framework: I wish simply to note that behind ... Kant's formal idealism, lies a principle that is implicit in the Critique as a whole, but is nowhere made fully explicit: that whatever is necessary for the representation or experience of something as an object, that is, whatever is required for the recognition or picking out of what is 'objective' in our experience, must reflect the cognitive structure of the mind (its manner of representing) rather than the nature of the object as it is in itself. To claim otherwise is to assume that the mind can somehow have access to an object ... independently of the very elements that have been stipulated to be the conditions of the possibility of doing this in the first place. This involves an obvious contradiction. 28

As mentioned at the beginning of this section, Allison's emphasis on the formal conditions of the mind, 'rather than the nature of the object as it is in itself' is intended as a swipe against the transcendental realist position-against a role for See ibid., ch. 7. Ibid. 27. It is worth noting that Guyer challenges Allison's claim that "an obvious contradiction" is involved. In Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 336 £E., Guyer suggests that the contradiction charge is plausible only on the (question-begging) assumption of a 'substantive premise that an epistemic condition necessarily represents the structure of the epistemic subject instead of the structure of the object of knowledge' (p. 339). Guyer's challenge is in keeping with his more ontologically robust reading of Kant's project. As should be clear from what follows below, I share some worries concerning Allison's analysis. Nonetheless, I agree with Allison's general privileging of epistemic conditions over ontological commitments. The Copernican revolution turns on this hinge. 27 28

EmpiricaL ReaLism/Priority of Judgement

39

noumenal "objects" as encouraged by "two-world" interpreters. In the above passage Allison presses this point again, asserting a priority for 'the cognitive structure of the mind'. Unfortunately, this approach, stressing the importance of minddependent formal constraints, also directly encourages the underplaying of the equally necessary notion of unity in the empiricaL object itseLf as an original condition for determinate inner content. In correctly dispensing with the transcendental realist view of objects as things-in-themselves, Allison's focused appeal to the formal features of synthesis inadvertently impedes the explication of the role of the empirical reference relation as a condition for the possibility of the mental content of one's representations. Emphasizing formalism as the response to the empirical idealist (Berkeleian) charge, without genuine empirical reference relations in place, is, I believe, a partial and ultimately misleading characterization of the breadth of Kant's challenge to the pre-critical model of cognition. It invites reductive phenomenalist treatments, reducing reference relations to reflect, as Allison puts it, "the cognitive structure of the mind (its manner of representing) rather than the nature of the object as it is in itself". In Allison's case, this is clearly no simple phenomenalism. If Allison is successful in establishing merely the constitutive role of categorial concepts, this in itself blocks any crude reduction of experience to sense-data. 29 But where we fail to take Kant's insight beyond the formal and still internaL requirements, we end up, I suggest, with little more than a form of empirical idealism fortified with formal features. Despite the genuine gains the two-standpoints view accrues over the two-worlds interpretation, Allison's approach invites a type of 29 Allison would of course reject this characterization of his approach, believing that the formal aspects that animate Kant's idealism adequately block the kind of phenomenalism that I am attributing to his sympathetic account. His rather awkward designation for empirical objects as objects in the 'weighty' sense is intended to forestall any such attempt (Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 136). But, as much as this term is intended to allay the reductive fear, it unintentionally highlights the difficulty even sympathetic commentators encounter when assessing how empirically real appearances are when the dominant epistemic framework remains broadly constructivist in character.

40

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

form-geared constructIvIsm: an architectonically wellgrounded construction no doubt, but a subject-to-object, jnnerto-outer constructivism nonetheless. I.2.3. Reference to the Empirical Object

The inclusion of a role (as yet unspecified) for the empirical object-in-itself, introduces demanding questions concerning how to treat the empirical thing-in-itself without reducing it to inner determinations. What is meant by. the empirical thing-initself? How do we prevent this term from taking on the meaning of its transcendental realist cousin? As Kant remarks: For we have to do only with our representations; how things in themselves may be (without regard to representations through which.they affect us) is entirely beyond our cognitive sphere. Now although the appearances are not things in themselves, and nevertheless are the only thing that can be given to us for cognition, I still have to show what sort of combination in time pertains to the manifold in the appearances itself ... what do I understand by the question, how the manifold may be combined in the appearance itself (which is yet nothing in itself)? (B2 35-6)

Kant's question is obvious and fundamental. In the first sentence Kant reminds us that knowledge cannot extend to noumenal objects. In the second sentence he is careful to leave open epistemological space for the crucial role of the empirical object-as-it-is-in-itself. In the third sentence, he launches the defining question of the Analogies: if appearances are not things-in-themselves, what sense can we attach to the idea of inherent relations among appearances independent of our particular manner of connecting them? An answer to this question, developed in Chapter 3, forms the basis for our analysis of the central task of the Analogies. The question is not the empirical concern over which is the best, or most rational, way of connecting appearances. Kant's question concerns what sense we can attach to the representation of a connection in the appearances themselves when appearances are viewed as in uns in the transcendental sense. Kant's response, as we shall see, is designed to highlight the role assigned to objective truth-

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

4I

conditions, an(~ the temporal/spatial structure of the manifold of appearances, as necessary conditions for the possibility of representation. We can see the general outline of Kant's approach in the following passage: Here that which lies in the successive apprehension is considered as representation, but the appearance that is given to me, in spite of the fact that it is nothing more than a sum of these representations, is considered as their object, with which my concept, which I draw from the representations of apprehension, is to agree. One quickly sees that, since the agreement of cognition with the object is truth, only the forlmli conditions of empirical truth can be inquired after here, and appearance, in contradistinction to the representations of apprehension, can thereby only be represented as the object that is distinct from them if it stands under a rule that distinguishes it from every other apprehension, and makes one way of combining the manifold necessary. That in the appearance which contains the condition of this necessary rule of apprehension is the object. (B236)

This is a punishingly dense passage. We must wait until Chapter 3 to make the claims fully transparent. Nonetheless, it does offer some signposts for what lies ahead. In what should be taken only as an introductory remark at this stage, we can see that Kant distinguishes the representation of an object, from the object itself, by arguing that the notion of combination in the object, and not merely in the apprehension of the object, is representable by us in terms of the idea of the order of appearances as necessitated in "some one particular mode of connection of the manifold". In other words, if a distinction is to be maintained between inner representations of an object, and the representation of the empirical object itself in space and time, we must represent appearances as having determinate temporal and spatial relations independent of the successive character of our idiosyncratic manner of perceiving (the mere successive mode of inner sense) the object or event. I see a ship go right to left in my visual field, you see a ship go left to right in your visual field, and yet we both see the ship moving in the same objective direction. We see the same ship but from oppos~ ing sides of the river bank. The point, as we shall see, is that in order for underdetermined intuition to be the basis for the representation of an objective domain, there must be sufficient

42

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

constraints in the manifold of the signified (manifold of appearances) to make unique representation possible. The principles of substance, causal connection, and reciprocal causal determination (the Analogies) are Kant's arguments for this necessary rule-governed constraint. A proper understanding of Kant's approach to the necessary conditions for representation requires that we leave open a role for the empirical object. Allison's claim that 'whatever is required for the recognition or picking out of what is "objective" in our experience must reflect the cognitive structure of the mind (its manner of representing) rather than the nature of the object as it is in itselpo is a distorting half-truth. No doubt, without the original synthetic unity of apperception, forms of intuition and the modes of judgement, there can be no representation at alL Moreover, we have no knowledge of a noumenal object. That much is certain. But the indispensable role Kant attributes to what he calls "unity in the [empirical] object", "combination in the [empirical] object,' 'affinity in the manifold [of appearanceJ", "rule-governed connection in the manifold of appearance" is not captured by appealing to the mere subject-centred activity of form-constrained synthesis. Of course all the epistemic conditions canvassed above are required and central to Kant's analysis. But what must be resisted is the view that the objective pole of representation (unity-in-the-object) is itself merely a phenomenalistic demand. This view can be the (unintended) result of stressing the subject-centred "epistemic condition" approach. Explicating the role of the empirical object requires a more radical step away from the received, Cartesian approach. A new epistemological model of the relation of mind and world is on offer. Kant's repeated and consistent appeals concerning the immediate (unmittelbar) nature of objective considerations for the possibility of determinate inner representation provides a clear indication that the Copernican revolution is also designed to challenge the mediated connection between belief and reality that the role of the given occupies in the pre-critical (and much

i

i

'I

I

J'

I L

30

Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 27.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

43

of the post-critical) tradition. It is the experience of objects, not sensations that are synthesized into objects, that figures in the foreground of the analysis. Consider, for example, the followmg passages: Every outer perception therefore immediately proves something real in space, or rather is itself the real; to that extent, empirical realism is beyond doubt, i.e. to our outer intuitions there corresponds something real in space. (A375) Consciousness in time is necessarily combined with the consciousness of the possibility of this time-determination: Therefore it is also necessarily combined with the existence of the things outside me, as the condition of time-determination; i.e., the consciousness of my own existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me. (Bz.76) Idealism.[material] assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and that from that outer things could only be inferred, but, as in any case in which one infers from given effects to determinate causes, only unreliably ... Yet here it is proved that outer experience is really immediate, that only by means of it is possible .. , inner experience. (B277) The transcendental idealist is an empirical realist, and grants to matter, as appearance, a reality which need not be inferred, but is immediately perceived. In contrast, transcendental realism necessarily falls into embarrassment, and finds itself required to give way to empirical idealism . " (A37I)

These passages suggest that Kant aspires to more than a trumped-up form of empirical idealism. In each passage Kant repudiates the mediate connection the Cartesian epistemic model of cognition mandates. Kant in fact notes that 'the game that idealism plays has with greater justice been turned against it' (B276). The thrust of this reversal is directed against the idea that we can do without immediate reference-to-an-object and still assume that judgement provides determinate inner content. Kant asserts that "'outer experience is really immediate, and only by means of it is inner experience .. , possible", As R. Pippin argues: Kant will argue in great detail that there cannot be a determinate awareness of 'unity' in sensatiol1,that there must be judgment or

44

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

synthesis in order for such awareness to occur ... this account of sensation as 'matter' is a crucial element in Kant's criticism of any empiricist 'foundationalism'. It is, after all, his critique of 'the myth of the given' . , ,31

I share with Pippin the view that Kant is departing substantially from the received meta-epistemological tradition. Kant's attack on the transcendental realist "givenness" model anticipates by I 50 years contemporary criticisms of empiricism. The Copernican experiment is intended to put the Cartesian image of cognition on its head. Private experience is not the domain of primitively given simples. While a subject's experience is idiosyncratic and partial, it is always object oriented. Let us take stock. I have suggested that, if we operate under· the idea that determinate cognition begins with a subjectcentred given (transcendental matter, sensation, individuated practices, or intellectual objects) as the transcendental realist framework invites, then it is entirely reasonable to judge empirical realism as a precursor to modern anti-realism. I argued that the two "competing" interpretations (Epistemic Humanism and Ultimate Realism) of empirical realism converge on this issue because they begin with a deep, shared commitment to an implicit Cartesian model of our original epistemic situation. Taken together, these views crowd out the possibility of realism at the empirical level. Recent attempts to challenge the ultimate realist position, by those who attack its "two-world" requirements, have emphasized an epistemological reading of the Critique over an ontological account. These views, while liberating empirical realism from the grip of Ultimate Realism, at the same time understate the epistemological role of the empirical object itself. By drawing attention not merely to the formal aspect of transcendental idealism but to the object-involving character of Kant's account of mental content, I have suggested that empirical realism signals a more radical rupture with the received epistemological tradition than has been previously acknowledged, even by sympathetic commentators.

31

Pippin, Kant's Theory of Form, 28-9.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

1.3.

45

A NEW DIRECTION

In the preceding section we saw why the dominant interpretations converge on an anti-realist reading of empirical realism. It was also suggested in Section 1.2 that the stressing of merely the formal components of Kant's approach fails adequately to express the scope of Kant's rejection of the Cartesian-inspired epistemological framework. I grant, of course, that formalism is a central feature of Kant's approach. The worry is that this formalism is all too easily grafted onto a broad constructivist/phenomenological account of the relation between mind and world. I have suggested that the priority Kant attaches to empirical reference relations and empirical truth, through the (thus far undeveloped) idea of "unity-in-the-object" and "unity-of-the-manifold-of-appearance", should be regarded as foreground epistemological considerations; Kant insists that determinate representation requires that inner sensible signs be conjoined 'in the object, no matter what the state of the subject may be' (BI42). This requirement forms the basis of Kant's repudiation of the constructivism/phenomenalism of empirical idealism, and it offers a clue for understanding the significance Kant attaches to the role of empirical reference and truth as conditions for the possibility of determinate inner representation. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to discussing the requirement of unity-in-the-object, and unity in the objective manifold as a whole-examining how these components provide the basis for the break with the dominant epistemic tradition signalled by empirical realism. This discussion, with its appeal to contemporary epistemological themes developed by Quine, Davidson, and McDowell, will serve to highlight the very modern character of Kant's approach: prioritizing considerations of empirical truth over any empirically grounding role for "the given".

46

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

I.3· I . Why is the Priority-of-Judgement Approach a Challenge to the Pre-Critical Framework? A start can be made towards revealing what follows from the radical nature of the shift Kant is advocating if we return to the main distinction between empirical realism and empirical idealism already introduced. We have seen that, instead of working from the Cartesian premiss of determinate inner representations to (putative) outer objects, the Kantian model reverses this order, arguing that 'internal experience in general is possible only through external experience in general" (B279). The empirical idealism of Berkeley and Hume derives the existence of objects from what is given primitively in the content of perception: viewing the subjective basis of representation (given mental content) as a sufficient basis for supporting inferences to corresponding objects. Empirical realism renounces the dogma of the determinacy of the given, Rather than deriving the existence of objects, empirical realism demands the immediate involvement of reference relations as a condition for determinate inner content: Idealism [material] assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and that from that outer things could only be inferred, but, as in any case in which one infers from given effects to determinate causes, only unreliably ... Yet here it is proved that outer experience is really immediate, that only by means of it is possible ... inner experience. (B277) rl fl

II

Having established the general need for reference to objects as a condition for inner experience, we are required now to examine why Kant believes that objects and events must be immediately invoked. What epistemological themes are signalled by the prioritization of outer experience? What follows if we accept it? To gauge the direction Kant is charting, and to assess the merits of the empirical realism that emerges, some care must be taken to diagnose correctly the level of Kant's epistemological concerns. The first and most basic issue concerns what must cognitively be in place to account for the individuation of mental content that the empirical idealist thinks we are simply given. 32 What does Kant put in its place? 32 It has become almost an article of faith to regard the Analytic of Principles as Kant's treatment of how we arrive at justified belief on the basis of the

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

47

We have seen that classical empiricism proceeds on the assumption that we already have, in perceptual content, sufficient individuation for representation. The analysis of cognition is dominated by the task of accounting for how we put these given elements together. Hume's principles of association are intended to perform that role. The concept of "reference-toan-object" comes later: a derivative entity constructed from the already individuated content of perception. As Hume famously states: 'that fiction, as well as the identity, is really false ... and has no other effect than to remedy the interruption of our perceptions.'33 The process of knowledge acquisition is modelled in terms of a gradual, accumulative procedure-moving from immediately given impressions to objects, interactions, expectations, scientific theories, and so on. It is this image of the human cognitive situation, as we have seen, that animates the empirical idealist view. Kant contrasts this model with the empirical realist demand for the immediate presence of objects and their powers as a condition for the possibility of determinate subject-centred representation. The basic problem that the Kantian approach confronts concerns how we account for the original individuation supplied spontaneously by the understanding. This differs markedly from the empirical idealist description of the basic problem. As G. Nagel suggests: Hume thinks that our concepts of objects are the products of repeated and habit-forming experiences of conjunctions of qualities. We form the concept of bread, for example, from the sensory impressions of color, textul'e, taste, and smell. This is no doubt partly true, but it cannot be the basic truth because it leaves unexplained why we ever experience those sensations as conjoined. We do not experience objects in isolation from other objects. Nor do we experience all the sensory qualities of a thing in every encounter with it. Since sensory qualities of activity he assigns to categorial judgement. This is at best an halfDialectic. truth. Most of Kant's concern for the justification of belief is in The Categories and Principles are really concerned with the question of how it is that we get determinate representation np and running, rather than the secondary question of how we are guided in putting together already individuated heliefs. As Kant suggests, the primary role of reason in its spontaneous mode (understanding) is 'not to make the representation of an object distinct, but rather to make the representation of an objeet possible at all' (B244). 33 Hume;Treatise, hk. I, part IV, sect. II.

48

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

things overlap, intermingle, and seldom (if ever) are experienced as an entire set, we require an explanation of how it is that we manage to sort Ollt which qualities go with which in the composition of an object. 34

Nagel's worry is well founded. How can an approach (like Hume's) that appeals to "informative" content adequately account for the original individuation of content, given the muddy character of our experience? It is not that Hume offers the wrong answer. It is rather that he has asked the wrong question. As Nagel concludes: The usual answer from empiricists [to the problem of how we group and sort attributes] is that we solve such problems over time, by association and by trial and error. The answer avoids the deep difficulty, which is not to account for how we end up at the right place. The difficulty is to explain how we ever get started. We can easily appreciate how conditioning adds another association to ideas that are already fairly well sorted out. One can explain how trial and error could conect the odd fault in a network of ideas. But these measures do not meet the need for an explanation of the origins of objective thought, which, though drawn from individual and very different courses of sensation, converges nonetheless on a common body of knowledge-instead of remaining as varied and individual as our habits and chance associations. 35

We can well imagine how experience corrects and augments· the patterns of beliefs we hold true of the world. That much of the empirical idealist programme is fine. The trouble is that this approach avoids the deeper problem of accounting for the original structures (of judgement) that operate as necessary conditions for the primitive individuation of belief. In general, the central problem with the empirical idealist view is that it abstracts from object-involving considerations: assuming in a dogmatic manner that bare sensations can, in some way, provide the basis for truth-preserving inferences that "establish" reference and truth relations to the individuated realm of empirical objects. The empirical idealist proceeds as if sensations are bearers of propositional content in the way that only beliefs can be. This is really the subtext for Hume's appeal to sensations as the ultimate evidential and justificatory basis for our belief structures. 34

Nagel, The Structure of Experience, 43.

35

Ibid.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

49

The idea that habit and custom can somehow connect sensations to beliefs in an evidential relation conceals a troubling epistemic issue. The empiricist approach, no doubt, adequately addresses the problem of how we review beliefs, extrapolate from present perception to judgements about future states, replace those that are at odds with the collective force of others, and so on. Here empirical idealism and empirical realism agree. 36 But this is a poor substitute for an answer at the level of Kant's concerns that centre on how representation, given the poverty of beginning with sensations, ever gets going. The fact that sensations lack propositional content is not, of itself, overcome with appeals to custom or habit that (somehow) link what is given in sense with what is represented as real. This would work only if inner sense is already individuated-that is, if (someHow) we have self-authenticated experience of purely inner states that can support truth-preserving inferences. Kant, like many modern epistemologists, sees himself as attacking this epistemological prejudice.

I.3.2. The Kantian Attack 011 the Role of the Given

The Kantian challenge is more than a buckshot response to individually questionable aspects of the empirical idealist formulation. The real target is the governing model itself; the idea contained in the empiricist description of the original epistemic setting, in which an epistemic role for the given (sensation, transcendental matter, self-authenticating practices) is introduced independently of the conditions of judgement, truth, and reference. We can bring the fundamental aspect of the new epistemic framework contained in this challenge into sharper focus if we examine (in a preliminary way at this stage37 ) why it makes sense to deny a belief-constraining role to bare sensation. From the outset, it should be acknowledged that assigning an epistemological role to sensation is a natural and powerful way 36 It should be noted that Kant also includes the regulative use of the ideas of reason as crucial players in this higher-order comprehension of nature. A realist interpretation of the role of these ideas is developed in Chapter 5. 37 In Chapter 2 this relation is examined in more detail.

50

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

of modelling our cognitive engagement with the world. Since it is only our sensory organs that are in causal contact with objects, it is natural to think that information, justification, and evidence must ultimately be grounded in the deliverances of the senses. The sensory given seerps to be where the world and thought meet each other. This is the charm and allure of the empirical idealist approach. Why should we doubt it? The long answer is developed in Chapter 2, where I detail the activity of judgement even at the level of sensation (empirical intuition). The much neglected Axioms of Intuition and Anticipations of Perception anchor this part of the analysis. 38 The short answer highlights the object-centred character that judgement plays as the basis for second-order reflections on mental content. Consider, for example, the assertion, "1 see the red tomato on the table". How should .we describe the epistemic setting in which this assertion is made? One way (the Kantian approach) is to view this assertion as involving the judgement that the red tomato is on the table and that I am currently seeing the tomato on the table. Perception attends to objects, and only secondarily to the internal states that are the sensible expression of the judgement.39 The above assertion declares that, all things being equal, it is true that there is a red tomato on the table. The condition "all things being equal" is shorthand for the truth-conditions that are deployed (immediately, and usually unconsciously) in spontaneous perceptual judgement. These object-oriented conditions frame the perceptual context by assigning powers and dispositions to the objects perceived, and to my capacities for perceiving. When the lighting is right, and there are no obvious holographic projectors in sight, and I am not delirious, and so on, I can reasonably assert the existence of the red tomato. The perceptual 38 I COllnt the general neglect of these principles of the Analytic as indirect confirmation of my general view that interpreters come to the Critique with an empiricist bias. On my reading, this neglect is no surprise. It is in fact what we should expect, as it is in these principles that Kant directly challenges the sensation-up model of empiricism. 39 No doubt, I can respond to the question "What do you see?" by listing the sensory qualities, I.e. redness, glare near the edge of the surface, etc. But, on my reading, this list is the product of a second-order reflection on the objectinvolving first-order representations.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

51

act begins and. ends within the context of object-oriented judgements. When Kant declares in the Transcendental Deduction that 'a judgment is nothing other than the way to bring given cognitions to the objective unity of apperception' (BI42) he is claiming that, in making a judgement, the cognizing subject does more than merely group and sort (somehow) already present contents in the mind. On the contrary, Kant is claiming that it is only by means of the role of judgement that we have something to think about; that something is the case. Perceptual judgements are mental acts that assert (verbalized or not) that things are thus and so. We really should read the unity of apperception as revolving around the claim "I think that . .. ": part of the claim re\ating to the transcendental unity of the subject of cognition, and an equally important part relating to the objective state asserted by the thought: I find that.a judgment is nothing other than the way to bring given cognitions to the objective unity of apperception. That is the aim of the copula is ... For this word designates the relation of the representations to the original apperception and its necessary unity, even if the judgment itself is empirical, hence contingent, e.g., 'Bodies are heavy.' (Bq2)40

I will return to the importance of the copula "is" in Section I.3.4. For the moment I wish simply to emphasize how this approach differs from the empiricist position. Hume traces the first line of cognitive engagement not to object-oriented judgement, but to a collection of primitively given inner determinations: redness in my sensory field, and so on. The original judgement is deconstructed in a way that removes the objectoriented aspects of truth and reference. There are thus two domains for Hume. The first are the inner experiences of sensations themselves. The second are (fictitious) object-involving representations built up from the former. The empirical idealist regards the first set as epistemically primitive, the latter as derivative and projective. 40 Nagel, I believe rightly, takes the unity of apperception as a kind of Fregean assertion operator. He develops this claim in the context of the "I think that ... " interpretation of section I6 of the Deduction. See The Structure of Experience, 267 n. 37.

'I

52

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

In what manner does Kant's view challenge the empiricist account? Fundamental to the Kantian challenge is a recognition that purely "inner" experience is not merely a mirroring of directly given content. Impressions and ideas are not in the mind prior to judgement. Properly understood (on the Kantian reading), the statement "I am currently experiencing redness in my visual field" is a secondary judgement. It asserts the belief that I am currently experiencing redness in my visual field. 41 My intention is not to deny that introspective judgements about what we experience are outside the realm of genuine matters of fact. On the contrary, I suggest that it is because such claims are judgements that they enter into the world of possible facts. As judgements they must be integrated with the force of our other beliefs; in this case they flow from the first-order judgement we make that there is a tomato on the table. The important point is that the determination of particular beliefs, including those concerning those states we have exclusive access to (i.e. what we are sensing), operates within the framework of object-directed judgement. The informed character of belief is not derived from a primitive epistemic confrontation with bare sensation. In short, in Kant's system there are no judgement-free entities that can do the sort of information-relaying work that the empirical idealist assigns to bare sensations. Judgements, contra impressions, are object oriented. They assert that some fact obtains. This makes belief the right kind of candidate for truthpreserving inference. Hl1mean impressions, lying outside the framework of belief, also lie outside the sphere of inference, justification, and evidence. In this context, impressions are, as Kant suggests, 'as good as nothing' (AlII; see also AII2, Ano). Pippin captures this point well when he claims that 'representations are never simply objects seen in the mind's eye, but judgments that this is a such and such ... this means that the mere possession of sense impressions is in no sense to be taken as having knowledge of any kind, even inferior' Pippin's 41 The forms of judgement involved in empirical intuitions of the sort described in first-person accounts is taken up in Chapter 2. 42 Pippin, Kant's Theory of Form, 29.

!:

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

53

point is that bare sensation lacks the requisite determinacy to have an epistemological role. As he goes on to say, He [Kant] is also claiming, more generally, that sensory awareness cannot be considered an awareness of anything complex or determinate at all. A manifold is so determinate only when 'thought' in a determinate way, whether we only notice the subjective contents of inner sense, or intend some relation to an outer object. Such, at any rate, appears to be the force of his constant characterization of sensation as only the 'manner in which we are affected by objects', and his claim that it provides the mere matter of experience. 43

Pippin's analysis captures nicely the force of Kant's approach. Sensations are not present to the mind prior to the act of bringing judgement to bear. will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, sensory states obtain only through low-level quantitative and qualitative forms of judging (Axioms and Anticipations of the Analytic). The only mild worry one might have with Pippin's account is his lingering commitment to the metaphor of noticed (and perhaps "unnoticed"?) mental content: "whether we only notice the subjective contents of inner sense." That sounds like a camouflaged commitment to individuated pre-conceptual content; something that is at odds with Pippin's own interpretation of sensation as indeterminate and merely the place-holder for our causal connection to the world. To attribute content to sensations independent of judgement would be to continue to allow a properly causal relation to bleed into an epistemological claim. The force of this section can be viewed in terms of the refusal to model Kant's approach in conformity with the dominant empiricist epistemological framework. Kant is not trying to find an ingenious way of connecting belief to the world by means of self-declared sensation. Kant is instead challenging the empiricist framework that sustains this expressed need. I.3.3. Davidson and McDowell: A Modern Echo

The new epistemic framework Kant is signalling with the Priority-of-Judgement approach has,.! believe, a surprisingly 43

Ibid. 33.

54

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

modern quality. In contemporary philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, the work of Donald Davidson and John McDowell has a bearing on Kant'~ assault on the empiricism of his day. In particular, one finds a striking parallel between the contemporary repudiation of the sensation-tobelief model and Kant's own repudiation of the epistemological model endorsed by empirical idealists. We gain, I think, a better grip on the character of Kant's overall project by looking briefly to the lessons provided by these contemporary attacks on empiricism. In particular, Davidson, like Kant, questions the basic epistemic assumption of classical empiricism: that beliefs can be identified with bare sensations: The simplest idea is to identify certain beliefs with sensations. Thus Hume seems not to have distinguished between perceiving a green spot and perceiving that a spot is green. (An ambiguity in the word 'idea' was a great help here.) Other philosophers noted Hume's confusion, but tried to attain the same results by reducing the gap between perception and judgement to zero by attempting to formulate judgements that do not go beyond stating that the perception or sensation or presentation exists (whatever that may mean). Such theories do not justify beliefs on the basis of sensations, but try to justify certain beliefs by claiming that they have exactly the same epistemic content as a sensation. There are two difficulties with such a view: first, if the basic beliefs do not exceed in content the corresponding sensation they cannot support any inference to an objective world; and second, there are no such beliefs.44

Davidson's assault on the identification of belief with sensation is similar to the argument I have suggested Kant wields against empirical idealism. Sensation itself, without reference to object-involving considerations, cannot, Davidson maintains, 'support any inference to an objective world'. Bare sensation is profoundly inadequate as an evidential basis for belief. At the heart of Davidson's argument is a challenge to the Cartesian-inspired idea that we should characterize the basic epistemic situation in terms of a quest for a secure link between pure inner determinations (sensations) and our beliefs about 44 Donald Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge', in E. LePore (ed.), The Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986),310.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

55

the external world. Davidson rejects the view that something outside the boundary of the conceptual can enter into, and act as a ground or justifier for, the propositional content of belief. To borrow Sellars's expression, sensory impressions cannot impose constraints on the logical space of reasons. In addition, like Kant, Davidson's attack on this framework consists in pointing out that it is not mere sensation, but the apprehension of sensation-the belief that one is having a particular sensation-that constitutes the outermost limit of the epistemic landscape. Davidson's challenge is targeted directly against the priority assigned to inner content (sensations) as the evidential basis for representation: Suppose we say that sensations themselves, verbalized or not, justify beliefs that go beyond what is given in sensation. So, under certain conditions, having the sensation of seeing a green light flashing may justify the belief that a green light is flashing. The problem is to see how the sensation justifies the b~lief. Of course if someone has the sensation of seeing a green light fla~hillg, it is likely, under certain circumstances, that a green light is flashing. We can say this, since we know of his sensation, but he can't say it, since we are sUpposillghe is justified without having to depend on believing hehas the sensation. Suppose he believed he didn't have the sensation. Would the sensation still justify him in the belief in an objective flashing green light? (final emphasis added)4S

The emergence and justification of a belief is connected not, as the empiricist conceives, to transparently evident inner sensations that stand outside the structure of belief, but rather to the awareness of sensation, which is just another belief. Davidson argues persuasively in this passage that, per impossible, having the sensation alone, independent of the context of belief, would not be a sufficient justificatory basis for affirming or denying a belief. It makes no sense to think of sensations, independent of our beliefs, as having any justificatory or evidential role. No doubt, if sensations really were regarded as somehow mediating between beliefs and reality, then they would be the evidential and justificatory basis for belief. But, as Davidson makes plain, tbis way of viewing the epistemic situation is profoundly flawed. 45

Ibid . .3 I I.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement Although McDowell disputes the positive lesson Davidson derives from his attack on the role of the given, McDowell's challenge to empiricism targets the same set of problems. 46 Like Davidson, McDowell claims that: To make sense of the idea of a mental state's or episode's being directed towards the world, in the way in which, say a belief or judgment is, we need to put the state or episode in a normative context. A belief or judgement to the effect that things are thus and so-a belief or judgement whose content (as we say) is that things are thus and so-must be a posture or stance that is correctly or incorrectly adopted according to whether or not things are indeed thus and.so. 47

McDowell develops the case against an epistemological role for the given by noting that the given cannot enter into justificatory or evidential relations with belief: The idea of the Given is the idea that the space of reasons, the space of justifications or warrants, extends more widely than the conceptual sphere. The extra extent of the space of reasons is supposed to allow it to incorporate non-conceptual impacts from outside the realm of thought. But we cannot really understand the relations in virtue of which a judgement is warranted except as relations within the space of concepts: relations such as implication or probabilification, which hold between potential exercises of conceptual capacities. The attempt to extend the scope of justification relations outside the conceptual sphere cannot do what it is supposed to do. 48 46 In J. McDowell, Mind and World, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I994), we find broad agreement between McDowell and Davidson in the diagnosis of the errors of empiricist epistemology. Where they disagree is in the lessons derived. Davidson seeks to banish the scheme/content distinction entirely, while McDowell regards Davidson as caught in an unworkable dualism of the conceptual and the non-conceptual. McDowell seeks to reinvest intuition with conceptual character. On this latter issue, see McDowell's exchanges with C. Peacocke (in particular 'Peacocke and Evans on Demonstrative Content', Mind, 100 (Jan. 1991), and Peacocke's response 'Demonstrative Content: A Reply to John McDowell', Mind, 100 (Jan. I99I), as well as Peacocke's 'Nonconceptual Content Defended', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5812 (june 1998), and McDowell's response 'Peacocke' in 'Reply to Commentators' in the same volume). The pioneering work of the late G. Evans in The Varieties of Reference, ed. J. McDowell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), sets much of the tone for the debate on perceptual demonstratives. See Chapter 2 for more on how this contemporary debate relates to Kant's account of perceptual content. 47 McDowell, Mind and World, pp. xi-xii. 48 Ibid. 7.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

57

McDowell's point is that the empiricist, on the one hand, requires the given to be an exogenous ingredient-grounding and justifying the sphere of the conceptual in something outside the conceptual. And yet this external placing of the given at the same time aborts the required role because it removes the direct deliverances of the world from the realm in which justification, information, and evidence operate-the realm of belief. Rejecting the empiricist commitment to the given involves a refusal to conceive experience's demands on a system of beliefs as imposed from outside the activity of adjusting the system, by something constituted independently of the current state of the evolving system .... The required adjustments to the system depend on what we take experience to reveal to us, arid we can capture that only in terms of the concepts and conceptions that figure in the evolving system. What we take experiel1Ce to teHus is already part of the system, not an external constraint on it.49

In short, the first line of evidence and justification is not bare sensation, but the beliefs that emerge as empirical objects causally interact with our sensory organs. These beliefs, like all beliefs, enter into justificatory roles in the context of the set(s) of truth-conditions that frame the perceptual contexts in which it is right to believe that one is experiencing particular sensations. 50 The positive programme McDowell develops in response to his attack on the intelligibility of non-conceptual content as belief informing is similar in many respects to the reading of Kant developed below. McDowell claims that 'if we restrict ourselves to the standpoint of experience itself, what we find in Kant is precisely the picture I have been recommending: a picture in which reality is not located outside a boundary that encloses the conceptual sphere' .S1 In Chapter 2 I urge a reading of Kant's treatment of intuition that emphasizes, in a similar way, the fact that the deliverances of our sensibility (empirical intuitions) are already conceptually laden. McDowell's account Ibid. 135-6. The connection between conditions of truth and descriptions of inner content is complex. In Chapter 2 I discuss this in greater detail. 51 McDowell, Mind tmd World, 41. 49

50

58

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

of the character of conceptual content has a strong affinity with my reading of the role of the Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception in the Critique. 52 Davidson's and McDowell's assault on the viability of assigning the role of epistemic intermediary to sensation has had a decidedly mixed reception in both epistemology and the philosophy of language. I suspect that this is due, in part, to a reluctance to depart from the familiar and entrenched empiricist framework. Anything outside this tradition seems misplaced. What is epistemology if not the question of how sensations constrain and justify our beliefs? What could be a more solid basis for belief than privately given sensations? Kant's rejoinder is announced in the well-known passage that opens the Introduction of the Critique: 'There is no doubt whatever that all our cognition begins with experience; for how else should the cognitive faculty be awakened into exercise if not through objects that stimulate our senses' (BI).1t is the conditions for the experience of objects, not sensations, that is key.

I.3-4- The Indeterminate/Determinate Model It is because Kant prioritizes the role of judgement, and recognizes the poverty of attempting to connect belief to something $2 Although Mind and World offers a Kantian approach to the issues of spontaneity (of judgement) and conceptual content, McDowell ultimately places Kant within the tradition he rejects-attributing to Kant the idea that 'something is Given in experience, from outside the activity of shaping worldviews' (p. I35). McDowell, perhaps under the powerful influence of Strawson's "two-world view", remains wedded in Mind and World to the idea that, for Kant, noumenal reality anchors experiential judgements: there is a noumenal input into the cognitive system. Consequently, McDowell regards Kant as never completely divorcing himself from the empiricist tradition. I believe that the motivating spirit bebind Mind and World, ironically, comes close to a twentieth-century statement of what Kant did say in the Critique. This irony is perhaps felt less keenly in McDowell's more recent statements 011 Kant. In the 1997 Woodbridge Lectures (Journal of Philosophy, 9519 (Sept. I998) McDowell acknowledges that he had a (mistaken) "two-world" interpretation of Kant in place in Mind and World (p. 469 n. 23). In this lecture he also acknowledges that his account of the role of Kantian intuition in Mind and World was faulty (p. 464, particularly 11. IS). The view that emerges from McDowell's most recent work is closer to the interpretation of intuition, and its relation to objects, that I advance in Chapter 2.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

59

outside of judgement (bare sensation, transcendental matter), that Kant's epistemological task is more taxing than the empirical idealist attempt to explain how we (merely) connect primitive given particulars. Kant's problem concerns how we secure representational assignments in the first place, given that without objective considerations the manifold of intuition is intrinsically indeterminate. S3 As Kant suggests, in mere apprehension, 'through this sequence, which is common to all apprehensions, nothing is distinguished from anything else' (B243). Where nothing is distinguished from anything else, nothing is distinguished at all. Having outlined the challenge to the empirical idealist commitment to an insulated given, we now need some way of representing How empirical realism models the process of knowledge acquisition. I believe Kant's analysis is best understood in terms of viewing knowledge acquisition as an openended process in which we move from initial ill-defined determinacy to greater levels of determinate representation. As G. Bird suggests: He [Kant] speaks generally of what is given to the senses as indeterminate until the understanding is able to determine, or discriminate between, what is perceived. Similarly, he speaks of 'determining' or 'determination' as the specific contribution which the understanding makes to knowledge (BrS7-rs8, BI68-r69) ... The familiar [empiricist] distinction between what.is strictly given and what is inferred or constructed from this basic material, is not exactly the contrast Kant has in mind .... Kant's construction is not 'vertical', from low level to higher level descriptions, but 'horizontal', from an indiscriminate manifold of sense to discriminated items within it. 54 53 Modern accounts in the psychology of perception have seen similar debates. The debate betweeil indirect and direct accounts of perceptual content is one example. Advocates of the indirect school look to a broadly Humean view in which sensory inputs are primitive and perceptions of objects are constructed from them. The direct school moves in a Kantian direction, viewing perception as a direct relation between judgement and the world. In this case, sensations arc secondary features that we abstract to: world-involving conditions are viewed as primitive aspects for perceptual content. J. J. Gibson's work is a clear expression of the direct perception view (see D. McBurney and V. Collings, Introduction to Sensation/Perception, 2nd edn. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1984) for a good introductory discussion of the relevant issues). 54 Bird, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, 57.

60

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

Kant's rejection of a determinate given necessitates a new way of viewing the epistemological process of representation. I suggest that we can make more sense of Kant analysis, particularly of the Analogies and relevant portions of the Transcendental Deduction, by replacing the Cartesian-inspired hottom-up approach with the indeterminate-to-determinate modeL The discrimination of the manifold of appearances is, as Bird suggests, "horizontal". Our beliefs about the world proceed on the basis of what are initially rather poorly defined truth-contexts of judgement. As we will explore the Analogies in Chapter 3, 1 will not develop their role at this stage, except to draw attention to the fact that Kant is at great pains throughout to expose the conceptual, and temporal, poverty of the (mere) subjective sources available to cognition. Kant begins each of the three Analogies with a description intended to show why we cannot model the epistemological situation in terms of determinate subjective representations. Object-oriented considerations that Kant groups under the notion of "unity-in-the-object" are required in order to account for both determinate conceptual content and objective temporal structure. The Analogies supply the conceptual and temporal resources for this necessary objective framework. In the Transcendental Deduction Kant introduces the indeterminate/determinate approach in its most general form. 55 This form expresses the requirement that, in an empirical judgement, the object of the judgement (the appearance) must 55 This is by no means the only theme of the Deduction, although it is the most relevant for immediate purposes. Most critical attention directed to the Deduction focuses on the legitimacy of the transcendental unity of apperception. Although I will not review Kant's argument establishing the synthetic unity of apperception, I do acknowledge that this highest unity is a vital part of Kant's account of cognition. Without this formal unity at the subjective pole of cognition, the synthesis necessary for all possible judgements would not be viable: 'we can represent nothing as combined in the object without havitig previously combined it ourselves, and that among all representations combination is the only one that is not given through objects but can be executed only by the subject itself, since it is an act of its self-activity' (BI30). For present purposes, I am interested in the second pole of representation-namely, the unity attributable to the object of cognition. The subject-centred pole is well (perhaps overly well) represented in existing secondary literature.

-------------.---~------.----

;1

J .j

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

6I

be regarded as the locus of predicates that we attach to it through our experience of it. When Kant first introduces the concept of an appearance, in the Aesthetic, he describes it as the 'undetermined [unbestimmte] object of an empirical intuition' (BH). The initially puzzling notion of "undetermined object" can be made clear if we recall Kant's account of an empirical judgement. In any synthetic judgement, we posit a logical subject "x" which grounds the unity of all possible predicates that are synthetically connected to this subject. Kant's reference to the indeterminate object of an empirical judgement is a reminder that empirical cognition, while always partial and incomplete, requires, as a condition of the judgement that renders the cognition possible, a logical subject distinct from the partial empirical determination. The "x" is thus a place-holder for the richness of the empirical object. As Nagel suggests, it is like an algebraic expression that is gradually solved as we attribute more predicates to that subject in the course of having more experience of the object: We start with the object itself from our first encounter with it, when we have no detailed characterization of it. As experience progresses, we learn more and more about it. But the it-the [empirical] thing itselfconfronts us from the outset. The empiricist describes us as starting with the heterogeniety of sensory particulars that are gradually unified. Kant describes us as starting with the unity of the object, its determinate character as yet unknown, to which subsequent experience brings detail and specificity.56

Kant makes this clear in his introductory remarks distinguishing analytic judgements from synthetic judgements: although I do not at all include the predicate of weight in the concept of a body in general, the concept nevertheless designates an object of experience through a part of it, to which I can therefore add still other parts of the same experience as belonging with the former. I can first cognize the concept of body analytically through the marks of extension, or impenetrability, of shape, etc., which are all [analytically] thought in this concept. But now I amplify my cognition and, looking back to the experience from which I had extracted this concept of body, I find that weight is also always connected with the previous marks, 56

Nagel, The Structure of Experience, 28.

~;

"

r

I'1

62

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

and I therefore add this synthetically as predicate to that concept. It is thus experience on which the possibility of the synthesis of the predicate of weight with the concept of body is grounded, since both concepts, though the one is not contained in the other, nevertheless belong together, though only contingently, as parts of a whole, namely experience. (Bn} .

Of course, weight is something that we connect with the concept of ,a body very early on in the course of experience. More fine-grained determinations of an object may well be held hostage to the idiosyncratic character of human inquiry for much longer periods. Certainly the history of science testifies to the very slow unfolding of our understanding of the nature of objects. Thus we can view the description of appearances as the "indeterminate object" in terms of a logical place-holder for as yet undiscovered empirical properties of the empirical object. 57 In the Deduction, Kant introduces this idea of unity-in-theobject in the context of distinguishing the notion of judgement from the empirical notion of association. In a judgement, I assert an objective claim by means of the copula "is"-for example, "This tomato is red", "Snow is white". Judgements, as mentioned above, are assertoric. They claim that some state of affairs obtains. This is the force of Kant's claim that judgements assert a necessary relation among representations even when the judgements are empirical and therefore contingent in their origin: I find that a judgment is nothing other than the way to bring given cognitions to the objective unity of apperception. That is the aim of the copula is in them ... For this word designates the relation of the representations to the original apperception and its necessary unity, even if the judgment itself is empirical, hence contingent, e.g., 'Bodies are heavy.' (B 142)

One of Kant's chief aims in the Deduction is to contrast his judgement-oriented approach with the associationist account of empirical idealism. In the process of drawing the contrast, by stressing that objective validity attaches to judgements only, 57 In Chapter 4 I look at the realist and anti-realist readings that arise from this claim.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

63

Kant also intends to draw our attention to the object-oriented pole of representation: an aspect of representation not accounted for (positively rejected) by Berkeley and Hume. In Chapter 3 I develop a detailed account of the idea of unityin-the-object: how this object-oriented feature of judgement is developed in the context of the Analogies. For the moment, the relevant lesson we should draw from this brief incursion into the Deduction is that Kant's general account of judgement, and its relation to objects of possible experience, requires more cognitive resources than are available if we were to credit the mind with only subject-centred content. No doubt the role of the subject's self~activity is crucial for the synthesis necessary for any judgement. The transcendental unity of apperception is a formal unity contributed by the subject. But this role should not blind us to th,e equally important role of the indeterminate empirical object as a second, necessary feature of all empirical judgement: Only in this way does there arise from this relation a judgment, i.e., a relation that is objectively valid, and that is sufficiently distinguished from the relation of these same representations in which there would be only subjective validity, e.g., in accordance with laws of association. In accordance with the later I could only say 'If I carry a body, I feel a pressure of weight', but not 'It, the body, is heavy', which would be to say that these two representations are combined in the object, i.e., regardless of any difference in the condition of the subject (BI42; final emphasis added ).58 C

The indeterminate/determinate model also provides the basis for developing Kant's account of the augmentation of belief: of how belief gradualJy converges on a single realm of causally determined objects. We can see how with more experience we 58 There are two ways of interpreting this passage. One might read it as a claim that we have subjective representations and judgement adds something to them in its act of uniting them under the concept of an object. This is in keeping with the distinction between "judgements of perception" and "judgements of experience" offered in the Prolegomena. A second reading sees this passage as a reductio of the subjectivist account; that, without judgement, we could never enjoy the kind of experience of the world that we do enjoy. I adopt the latter position. See Chapter 2 for a defence of the priority of object-involving judgement and how this differs from the (ill-chosen) distinction Kant adopts in the Prolegomena.

64

Empirical Realism/Priority of}udgement

gradually refine our beliefs, and, with them, we become more attuned to what perception reveals. There is a reciprocal relation between our beliefs and what experience exhibits. The more experience we enjoy, the more refined our beliefs become. The more sophisticated and subtle our view of the world becomes, the more we are able to distinguish in our perceptual interactions with the world. As Nagel suggests, if language acquisition in children provides any due in this matter, then this self-reinforcing model can be seen to capture something of the way our cognitive development actually progresses. Babies begin with a few sounds that mean a host of things. As they develop into toddlers these general expressions surrender to finer distinctions. The primitive sound of unreflective joy is gradually transformed by more precise expressions of excitement: "chase me", "can you see me", "push me higher". It is not as if the baby's experience is fundamentally empty with the odd patch of sensory engagement with the world. Anyone who has watched a baby push and pull at the world knows that there is a good deal of top-down cognitive involvement at work. It makes more sense to view the tral1sition in terms that look to future experiences as providing the opportunity for increasingly fine-grained judgements about the child's encounters and responses to the world. The child's field of experience is full from the beginning. What it lacks is definition and a mature capacity to discriminate objects and events. Accepting this general interpretative strategy, particularly the displacement of the bit-by-bit empiricist model, also supplies a framework for developing other important (but neglected) epistemological themes. One substantial theme is the holistic character of representation. Representational assignments do not occur one-by-one from intuition to appearance. Representation is secured by the holistic interconnection of the manifolds to each other. In other words, the deliverances of experience must be taken up, through acts of perception, within an overall interpretative framework. It is useful to read Kant within the Davidsonian tradition in this respect. Reference relations operate within truthconstrained contexts. In this way, the representational assignments judgement secures presuppose the broad framework of

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

6S

beliefs. The domain of the signified (manifold of appearances) must be regarded as the context-setting ground for the representation of each particular object in intuition. The particular representation of an object, its powers and its connection to other objects, thus begins with considerations of unity: what Kant at times calls the principle of the "affinity of the manifold" of appearance (AII3, AI22, B600, B79S).59 The contextsetting role of truth-conditions is not merely a background consideration. Truth-conditions are, in fact, fundamental enabling conditions, constraining the representational setting, such that unique representation, by means of intuitions, becomes possible. While it is no doubt true that we can isolate objects once spontaneous representation is in force, re-evaluate our initial causal and dispositional assignments, connect them in new ways, and so on, the germane point is that this evaluative, consciously, directed activity of reason presupposes the spontaneous judgements that the understanding has already deployed. These latter judgements, involving empirical objects and their diverse causal capacities and relations, merely codify what the general truth structure (GTS) has already encoded in the original act of representation by the understanding. Far from viewing Kant as opposed to the kind of contemporary holism offered, for example, by Quine, I maintain that Kant's account of representation in fact anticipates much of the contemporary shift-actually pushing the point further than Quine does. 60 Empirical content cannot be read off the surface of sensation or physical movements (practices). As Kant suggests, 'nothing is an object for us unless it presupposes the sum total of all empirical reality as the condition of its possibility' (B6ro). This theme is developed below (Section I.3.S). In general, we should think of the move away from the Cartesian epistemic model of cognition as also signalling a 59 See K. Westphal, 'Affinity, Idealism, and Naturalism: The Stability of Cinnabar and the Possibility of Experience', Kant-Studien, 88 (1997), 13~9, for a good recent discussion of the principle of affinity. My own reading of affinity is developed in Chapters 3 and 5. 60 See Philip Kitcher, 'How Kant Almost Wrote the "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" " in J. Mohanty and R. Shahan (eds.), Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, I982.), 2.17-50, for another (different) connection to Quine's assault on empiricism.

66

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

rejection of the empiricist view that reference assignments are secured on a one-to-one basis between intuition and appearances. The constraint provided by the manifold of appearance involves considerations that entail the full range of its interpreted causal structure, thus offering a constrained truthcontext in which particular objects can be represented. This leads to the (perhaps surprising) conclusion that holism is an important ingredient in the realist description of Kant's treatment of experience. The importance of holism is explored in detail in Chapters 2 and 3.

I.3.5. A Theory of Truth? In this general outline of the new direction I believe Kant is signalling, I have suggested that reference relations (the relation between the manifold of intuition and the manifold of appearance) operate holistically. I have also claimed that considerations of empirical truth figure in referential assignments. One may wonder how and why considerations of truth are regarded as necessary. Is it not the case that reference-the immediate relation between the sign and the signified-is the fundamental feature of this new model? The two concepts are of course closely connected. In modern epistemology and philosophy of language there is no shortage of competing accounts of the role of truth and reference. In epistemology, considerations of truth usually take the form of correspondence or coherence interpretations. Considerations of reference tend to follow in the wake of the preferred theory of truth: correspondence theorists favouring externalist accounts. of reference, coherence theorists tending towards some form of internalism. In the philosophy of language, the battlefield is far more complex. Since Frege, the debate has centred-as much as it has coalesced on any particular theme-on competing accounts of the priority of either sense or reference. Although most realists have rejected firmly Frege's absolute form of realism, they have nonetheless attempted to develop accounts of meaning that prioritize truth-conditions. Anti-realists have gone in the other

L

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

67

direction, looking to assertion-conditions as the basis for the sense of a sentence or proposition. 61 On the issue of truth, some realists have looked to Tarski-styled accounts of the use of the truth predicate as a vehicle for advancing their claim for an ine1iminable and primitive correspondence between mental content and its object. 62 Non-realists have tended to adopt expressivist strategies: asserting that there is no more to the truth than either an uninformative equivalence claim, or the (mere) assertoric role of the truth predicate. 63 Given the scope of the Critique, it is rather surprising that Kant develops the notion of truth little beyond his nominal definition oCtruth as 'the agreement [Ubereinstimmung] of knowledge with its object' (B82), and the requirement of an empirical criterion for truth (BI9I, B279). Of course, in the Dialectic Kant is concerned with carefully tracing out the wide and stormy ocean of transcendental illusion~the domain beyond the 'land of truth' (B29S). But, within the "land of truth", Kant says precious little about the positive conception of truth he is advocating. 64 One modern way of interpreting this silence is to think that Kant might be content with the deflationary accounts offered in 61 Wright, Truth and Objectivity, with its "superassertibility" account of evidential warrant, is perhaps the best expression of the second generation of this approach. See Dummett's corpus of work for a clear statement of the first generation of manifestationist views. 62 See William Alston, A Realist Conception of Truth (Ithica, NY: Cornell University l)ress, I996). 63 In Truth and Objectivity Crispin Wright offers a good account of the Wittgensteillian roots of the expressivist approach. See the early paper 'Truth' by Strawson, Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 24 (I950), for a good example of the claim that truth is not a real property. One can also look to many contemporary deflationist strategies that find their roots in F. P. Ramsey's work. Paul Horwich's Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I990), offers an excellent defence of a minimalist description of the llse of the truth predicate. 64 R. Walker argues that Kant is committed to aspects of both correspondence and coherence accounts of truth. In The Coherence Theory of Truth, Walker calls this an "impure coherence theory" as it borrows aspects of correspondence (inputs) with an unknowable realm (noumena). This is consistent with his "ultimate-realist" position. At the empirical level our judgements are grounded in a coherence model. From the more ultimate, noumenal, standpoint, our judgements are informed by corresponding l10umenal grounds. Also see Walker, 'Theories of Truth', in Bob Hale and Crispin Wright (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I997).

68

I J

Em[Jirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

contemporary philosophy of language. This is an attractive proposal because it seems consonant with Kant's unwillingness to expand on the notion of truth beyond its stipuJative deployment. Perhaps the attempt to capture the notion of truth in any substantive theory is to indulge, as Kant remarks, in the embarrassing spectacle of holding a sieve under a billy goat (B83). It is tempting to express Kant's position by claiming that he believed that we could capture all there is to say about truth in the context of his well-worked-out account of the conditions of human experience: the notion that "is true" adds nothing beyond assertoric force. Consider, in this case, Paul Horwich's recent defence of minimalism. 65 Horwich presents a powerful case for conceiving of the truth predicate as adding no independent content in communicative acts. He claims that the equivalency schema '(E) It is true that P if and only if p'66 exhausts the meaning of the truth predicate. To say that' "snow is white" is true' is to assert that the proposition "snow is white" is 'made true by the fact that snow is white' The equivalency schema connects a bearer of truth (a proposition or sentence) with a fact about the world. It thus asserts that truth is captured by the reference relation between the content of a proposition and its object. 68 This should sound familiar. It seems to capture the essence of Kant's nominal definition of truth as spelled out in terms of Ubereinstimmung. As attractive as this proposal initially is, I will be advancing throughout this book the case for viewing Kant's treatment of truth as suggesting something more. 69 No doubt, like the 1110dHorwich, Truth. 66 Ibid. 7. 67 Ibid. III. It should be pointed out that deflationism leaves us with nothing beyond a list of equivalencies. Sellars and others have argued that this amounts to little more than a phone-list account of the truth predicate. See W. Sellars, 'Truth and "Correspondence" " Journal of Philosophy, 59 (I962). Horwich discusses this in Truth, In-IS. A minimalist, of Horwich's stripe, is satisfied by this result. See Crispin Wright's formulation of minimalism (Truth and Objectivity) for a slightly more inflated conception of truth that still claims the minimalist design a tio n. 69 It remains unclear to me whether Horwich can adequately insulate his minimalism from a correspondence account of truth. In particular, in Truth, sects. 36-9, Horwich claims that a correspondence account of truth offers inflated interpretations of the notion of correspondence, facts, and the 65 68

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

69

ern minimalist, he is committed to thinking of the relation of mind and, nature in terms of a correspondence between belief and its object. Reference is a direct epistemological relation that expresses a truth relation between a judgement and its object. But, as I have suggested above, truth-conditions are built into Kant's account of the possibility of determinate representation. The reference relation is secured only in so far as we can represent the connection between objects in nature, and between nature and ourselves, as exhibiting properties and powers that we judge correct for the perceptual context. If, as I have suggested above, reference relations are established within the holistic context of truth-constrained empirical judgements (GTS), titen it is right that we should resist the idea that either empirical content, or deflated correspondence assignments, prefigure considerations of truth. It is objective truthconditions that create the framework in which world-involving reference assignments are first made?O As Kant suggests: the possibility of all objects of sense has to be presupposed as given in one sum total; and all possibility of empirical objects, their difference from one another and their thoroughgoing determination, can rest only on the limitation of this sum total. ... consequently, nothing is an object for us unless it presupposes the sum total of all empirical reality as the condition of it possibility. (B6IO)

Of course, it is not until we have examined the Analogies that we will be in a position to appreciate Kant's arguments referential relations of component parts of sentences. Much of this work is motivated by Horwich's conviction that millimalism is distinct from the correspondence theory of trllth--i.e. 'Thus any correspondence theory worthy of the name--any version of the theory that could be presented as al1 alternative to minimalism-would have to provide non-schematic and unified theories of con-espondence and fact' (Truth, II3). This claim seems to beg the question against the correspondence theorist. 70 This mirrors, I suggest, the Kantian requirement that representation begins with immediate reference to objects and events. In both cases, we witness a reversal of the traditional causal theory of reference as the ground for truth and meaning. As Davidson suggests: 'It is clear that the causal theory of meaning has little in common with the causal theories of reference of Kripke and Putnam. Those theories look to causal relation between names and objects of which speakers may well be ignorant. The chance of systematic error [scepticism] is thus increased. My causal theory does the reverse by connecting the cause of a belief with its object' ('A Coherence Theory', 3I8).

i ,1

I ,I

70

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

supporting the above view that the representation of individual ohjects takes place in the context of the complete and exhaustive mutual determination of the manifold of all empirical objects. Nonetheless, Kant's claim is that the sum total of interpreted relations within the field of empirical objects creates the framework in which individual beliefs emerge and are brought to full determinacy. It is in this way that the holistic character of the truth-structure makes individual reference relations possible. These assignments are not, of course, incontestable. Errors and perceptual anomalies often lead us to reformulate how we frame perceptual contexts. We learn from experience, and this learning takes place in the context of beliefs that cohere, as Kant suggests, with an empirical criterion for truth. But it is the original deployment of the truth-structure itself that creates the interpretative field in which this revision occurs. Despite Kant's reluctance to offer an extended account of the nature of empirical truth, we should accept, I believe, that the roles of truth and reference are fundamental, non-reductive features of his non-empiricist analysis. As a preliminary expression of this new model, we can summarize the points as follows: (I) reference-to-an-object is a condition for determinate representation, (2) reference is immediate, not inferred or constructed, (3) the reference relation requires affinity in the manifold of the represented (manifold of appearances), and (4) the holistic character of representation requires a general truth structure (GfS) as a condition for particular referential assignments. It will be noted that one standard aspect of the analysis of Kant's account of experience is missing from the above list. I have offered no lead for answering the perennial question "Is Kant offering a coherence or correspondence theory of truth?" \Y/e have seen that Kant does appeal to both aspects of truth. Nonetheless, I have avoided offering an interpretation of the meaning of the truth predicate in terms of the standard correspondence/coherence dichotomy. My reluctance in tackling this question directly is motivated by the conviction that the primitive character of truth in the Priority-of-Judgement approach means that it fails to fall cleanly into either view. The holism necessary for the determi-

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

71

nation of belief seems to favour some type of coherence interpretation. Yet the requirement of an immediate relation between thought and its object seems to suggest a correspondence relation. To bring together these apparently disparate themes in a way that shows why Kant's position is not threatened by this tension, we need to return briefly to the epistemological model Kant is chillenging. The Cartesian epistemic model of cognition, as we have seen, assumes the presence of determinate inner representation prior to objective considerations. The givenness of experience, with uncertain reference to objects in the case of problematic idealism, and no,xeference to objects in the dogmatic idealist case, exemplifies this approach. The operation of human understanding is viewed in terms of how we justify our higher-order beliefs in terms ultimately traced back to sensation as the final-and secure-foundation. Truth comes at the end of this epistemic analysis. Individuated givenness is the primitive concept. In conformity with this framework, we have seen why contemporary interpreters-both epistemic humanists and ultimate realists-;-are encouraged to view Kant as offering, at the empirical level, a coherence theory of truth. Kant is thought to be proposing a conception of truth that is in line with contemporary assertion-condition formulations. The dispute between these views thus centres on whether we can (or need to) invoke the notion of noumenal reality as a transcendental anchor for the coherence of our empirical beliefs. I accept that a coherence account of truth does do justice to the question concerning how we justify putative knowledge claims. We will see in Chapter 3 that Kant explicitly affirms the role of coherence as the basis for the identification of error. Nonetheless, what the coherence approach assumes is that determinate representation (belief) is secured independently of considerations of truth. By thinking of truth as a property of the most extensive, or reasonable, unity we can establish for our beliefs, truth is put in a subordinate role to individuated mental content. This way of viewing the role of truth effectively camouflages the real problem, which, on my interpretation,

I

.1

72

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

concerns the (il)legitimacy of a belief-constraining role for a "something" (sensation, transcendental matter, or selfauthenticating practices) that is radically independent of considerations of truth and belief. If, as I suggest, Kant is best understood as attacking the broad epistemic framework in which the given has an epistemic role, then the individuated character of belief, presupposed by the coherence interpretation, becomes arbitrary and dogmatic. By renouncing the idea of mental content independent of the truth-context of representation, we are also rejecting the idea that we can view truth as a derivative property of belief. The implicit assumption of primitive givenness commonly infects coherence interpretations of Kant's account of truth. It signals a failure to move beyond the broad Cartesian epistemic model. 71 If a slogan is needed, "Truth First" perhaps captures this rupture with the standard view that I am proposing in the context of Kant's rejection of a belief-informing role for the given. Empirical truth, therefore, far from being construed as the product of the coherence of our beliefs-the final chapter in the epistemic story-in fact enters in the preface as a condition of the individuation necessary for belief. Truth-the relation between thought and its object-is in this way a primitive, and not derivative, feature of the Copernican experiment. By taking seriously the demand that reference-to-an-object requires the deployment of a truth-structure, we begin to see how Kant's account of representation anticipates what has recently been labelled a realist truth-condition account of empirical content. 72 71 It is, I think, no surprise that constructivist programmes characteristically fall victim to conceptual relativism and problems over incommensurability. This is to be expected, owing to their endorsement of a primitive given that (somehow) informs belief and yet remains independent of anyone interpretative framework 72 Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory', 307. It is worth noting that in a subsequently released addition to 'A Coherence Theory' (,Afterthoughts, 1987', appended to 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge', in Allen 'Malachowski (ed.), Reading Rorty (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), Davidson, under pressure from R. Rorty and his pragmatist disciples, distances himself from his former claims that the semantic-driven analysis yields realism. This move away from realism is cemented in 'The Structure and Content of Truth', Journal of Philosophy, 87 (1990)' As is clear from what follows, I find the

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

73

We can summarize the above position as follows: (r) without a direct correspondence between thought and its object, determinate inner content is not possible, and (2) without the presence of a holistic truth-structure, particular correspondence assignments cannot be secured. Does this answer our original question concerning the status of Kant's account of truth? Although truth is a primitive concept, we can (and should) still expect aspects of both coherence and correspondence accounts to emerge: correspondence as the necessary immediate relation between judgement and its object relation; coherence as the basis for the identification and elimination of erroneous beliefs. Can we accommodate, at the empirical level, a hybrid of correspondence and coherence features? The detailed answer to this question is developed in the following chapters. Overall it is fair to say that what initially seems like a serious tension is gradually defused as we discuss why a direct correspondence between mind and nature is a necessary condition for the emergence of belief, while at the same time recognizing a fundamental role for coherence as the method for the identification of error and the refinement of knowledge. As I have introduced already elements of Quine's and Davidson's account of belief in this chapter, I now turn to a brief excursion into Davidson's critique of Quine's position. This critique is instructive in that it anticipates how the attack on the given has a direct bearing on a realist account of cognition. Davidson's challenge here serves as a useful anticipation of the scale and potential ramifications of Kant's judgementfirst approach:

I.3.6. Lessons from Davidson contra Quine Davidson contends that Quine's account of representation remains mired in a form of residual empiricism. This charge pre-Rorty position more compelling. Although I am not interested in pursuing the issue here, I think Davidson was correct the first time around when he claimed that a rejection of the myth of the given yields a direct cognitive relation between mind and world worthy of the realist designation.

74

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

may seem odd, given that it is Quine's 'Two Dogma's of Empiricism' that is the standard-bearer for contemporary attacks on empiricism. Nevertheless, Davidson's worry is more than an intramural affair. The subject of Davidson's attack is the role Quine assigns to observation sentences. Davidson rightly regards Quine as committed to the idea that the content of our beliefs depends, in an important way, upon the inclusion of causal inputs as epistemic intermediaries between belief and what our beliefs are about: What matters [for Quine] is that there should be an ultimate source of evidence whose character can be wholly specified without reference to what it is evidence for. Thus patterns of stimulation, like sense-data, can be identified and described without reference to 'what goes on around us'.73 Quine tells us that science tells us that 'our only source of information about the external world is through the impact of light rays and molecules upon our sensory surfaces'. What worries me is how to read the words 'source' and 'information'. Certainly it is true that events and objects in the external world cause us to believe things about the external world, and much, if not all, of the causality takes a route through the sense organs. The notion of information, however, applies in a n011metaphorical way only to engendered beliefs. So 'source' has to be read as 'cause' and 'information' as 'true belief' or 'knowledge'. Justification of beliefs caused by our senses is not yet in sight.74

It is Quine's refusal to drop the epistemic presumption that justified belief ultimately involves an appeal to the sensory given that supplies the focus of Davidson's attack. In his defence it should be granted that Quine, unlike positivists and verificationists, certainly makes no claim that the link between the sensory manifold and the world of objects is constructed in any one-to-one mapping. Here, Davidson and Quine agree. Empirical content is not read off experience in the way suggested by classical empiricism. The truth of our sentences cannot be tested one by one against experience, but must instead be tested together as a corporate body. The denial of that part of 73 Davidson, 'The Myth of the Subjective', in M. Krausz(ed.), Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1989), 162. 74 Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory', 3II.

Empitical RealismlPtiotity of Judgement

7S

empiricism is one of the central lessons of Quine. Davidson's point is rather that Quine has failed to purge entirely the empiricist image that (somehow) the determination of true belief is tied to a confrontation with something outside belief, to bare sensation: The difference lies in the nature of the choice of causes that govern interpretation. Quine makes interpretation depend on patterns of sensory stimulation, while I make it depend on the external events and objects the sentence is interpreted as being about?5 Quine and Dummett agree on a basic principle, which is that whatever there is to meaning must be traced back somehow to experience, the given, or patterns of sensory stimulation, something intermediate between belief and the usual objects our beliefs are about. (emphasis added)?6

It is this deep appeal to 'something intermediate between belief and the usual objects our beliefs are about' that keeps Quine's analysis within the broad empiricist tradition. The image of a primitive confrontation between belief and sensation in terms of the relaying of infotmation is senseless. Informative connections operate between beliefs, not "between" beliefs and bare sensation or "observation sentences" .77 The refusal of Quinian holism fully to discharge the Cartesian epistemic image stands in sharp contrast to the type of holism I have argued Kant favours. The necessity, in the Kantian model, of an immediate correspondence relation between belief and reality at the empirical level as a condition of determinate inner representation is, as already suggested, a direct challenge to assigning any epistemic role to a purely causal intermediary between belief and reality. We apprehend Ibid. 3I7. 76 Ibid. 313. See the appendix to 'In Praise of Observation Sentences', Journal of Philosophy, 90 (1993), for Quine's response to Davidson's charges. See also 'Progress on Two Fronts', Journal of Philosophy, 93 (1996). In the latter paper, Quine appears finally to have acknowledged Davidson's point. In this paper Quine admits that similarity in stimulus meaning (understood as similarity in nerve stimulation) cannot support the constitutive role of translation for the attribution of meaning. Nonetheless, Quine still appears to reject stubbornly the move to grounding radical int<;rpretation entirely upon distal, rather than proximal, engagement. 7S

77

76

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

what is given in the manifold of intuition only on the condition that it is taken up as signifying some objective state of affairs in the manifold of appearance. Apart from this, empirical content is, as Kant remarks, "nothing to us". Without the implicit presence of a truth-structure, reference fails, and the "given" falls away. The following passage from Davidson is a powerful statement of the modern analysis that runs roughly parallel to the Priority-of-Judgement interpretation of empirical realism I favour. Davidson's assault on the contemporary empiricist view captures nicely Kant's attack on the pre-critical epistemic paradigm: The approach to the problem of justification we have been tracing must be wrong. We have been trying to see it this way: a person has all his beliefs about the world-that is, all his beliefs. How can he tell if they are true, or apt to be true? Only, we have been assuming, by connecting his beliefs to the world, eonfronting certain of his beliefs with the deliverances of the senses one by one, or perhaps confronting the totality of his beliefs with the tribunal of experience. No such confrontation makes sense, for of course we can't get outside our skins to find out what is causing the internal happenings of which we are aware. Introducing intermediate steps or entities into the causal chain, like sensations or observations, serves only to make the epistemological problem more obvious ... The moral is obvious. Since we can't swear intermediaries to truthfulness, we should allow no intermediaries between our beliefs and their objects in the world. Of course there are causal intermediaries. What we must guard against are epistemic intermediaries. 78

What is of particular interest to the Kantian analysis is the fact that Davidson's repudiation of epistemic intermediarieshe goes straight to the world to fix the content of belief-leads him to a position in which he argues that the theory he defends 'is not in competition with a correspondence theory, but depends for its defense on an argument that purports to show that coherence yields correspondence',79 It is on the basis of the twin requirements of (I) the immediate reference to objects in the world, and (2) the view that our ability to identify error occurs within the field of belief, that Davidson adopts the 78

Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory',

312..

79

Ibid. 30 7.

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

77

slogan 'correspondence without confrontation'. This combination of coherence and correspondence elements leads Davidson to insist that the position he is defending is a form of realism: 'Given a correct epistemology, we can be realists in all departments. We can accept objective truth conditions as the key to meaning, a realist view of truth, and we can insist that knowledge is of an objective world independent of our thought or language' (emphasis added).80 Obviously this mix of correspondence and coherence features has a bearing on the "Truth-First" reading of empirical realism. The question is, in what way does this mix of correspondence and coherence features lead to realism? In Davidson's radical interpretation model we begin with the acknowledgement that judgement relates directly to objects and events. The propositional content yielded by judgements demands objective considerations of truth, not causal "input". This is why Davidson banishes causal connections from operating as epistemic intermediaries. Sensations have a causal role, but within the representational framework, not epistemologically prior to it. 81 Our ability to individuate what is given to us in experience via truth-conditio11s demands that we must, in Davidson's words, 'in the plainest and methodologically most basic cases, take the objects of a belief to be the causes of that belief'. 82 This, I suggest, is consonant with Kant's own insistence on the immediate relation between judgement and its object. This contemporary skirmish between Davidson and Quine helps to di~close the realist credentials that accrue from my reading of Kal1t's approach. In both Kant's and Davidson's analysis, judgement is the fundamental basis for representation. And in each case judgement mandates an immediate relation, via truth-conditions, between mind and nature. Truth-"the agreement of knowledge with its object"~~is the primitive epistemic concept. As Davidson suggests: 'It should be clear that I do not hope to define truth in terms of coherence and belief. Truth is beautifully transparent compared to belief and coherence, and I take it as primitive.'83 80 82

Ibid. 81 See n. 2}. Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory', 3I7-18.

83

Ibid. 308.

78

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

The priority of truth-conditions as the ground for the possibility of determinate representation thus leads Davidson to describe his account as one in which 'Truth emerges not as wholly detached from belief (as a correspondence theory would make it) nor as dependent on human methods and powers of discovery (as epistemic theories of truth would make it),. 84 The transcendental realist conception of truth (God's-eye view) is unintelligible, while the humanized, anti-realist replacement has, in making 'meaning accessible, [ironically] made truth inaccessible'.85 Davidson's truth-conditional account shares with Kant's empirical realism the attempt to forge a third possibility between transcendental realism and modern anti-realism. As Davidson suggests: 'I see no reason to suppose that [transcendental) realism and anti-realism, explained in terms of the radically non-epistemic or the radically episternic character of truth, are the only ways to give substance to a theory of truth or meaning.'We should 'refuse to endorse either. ... We must find another way of viewing the matter.'86 No doubt Kant's empirical realism is not what Davidson has in mind. Davidson thinks that semantic concerns are prior to epistemic questions. 87 Nonetheless, Davidson's attack on Quine, and Davidson's truth-primitive approach, give us some purchase on how Kant's shift away from an empiricist view, towards an interpretation that begins with judgement and its conditions- unity, reference, and truth-might terminate in an empirical realist account of experience: that the (correct) Davidson, 'Afterthoughts, I987', I36. Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory', 3I3. 86 Davidson, 'The Structure', 309. 87 The stranglehold hermeneutical interpretations currently enjoy over the interpretation of Davidson's work obfuscates Davidson's central concern, which is the priority of intetpretatioll as the framework in which questions over meaning and truth are conducted. Radical interpretation may be radically non-epistemic in so far as it begins with questions concerning conditions necessary for interpretation. But, as this takes place within the context of the role of judgement, epistemic concerns are not far off. Davidson says as much himself when he states that 'the methodology of intelpretation is, in this respect, nothing but epistemology seen in the mirror of meaning' {'Thought and Talk' in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I9 84), 169). 84 85

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

79

Kantian rejection of the transcendental realist view does not leave us with only assertion-condition, anti-realist options at the empirical level. By introducing, at the close of this chapter, a rough parallel between what Davidson is doing in philosophy of language, and what Kant is attempting in epistemology, we now have the basis for inoculating Kant's approach against the latent empiricist model of cognition that so deeply infects the standard interpretation of empirical realism. However, as a vehicle for explicating empirical realism, Davidson's semantic approach is too remote. Kant's theory of representation is far broader and more detailed than Davidson's account of radical interpretation. Davidson's analysis begins too far down the epistemic road, with, for example, modes of judgement, and temporal and spatial structure already in place. Kant's account of representation begins with more general problems and concerns.

I,3.7. A Look Ahead

If we return to the five core principles outlined in Section

I.I.I,

we can see how the above reflections on Kant's account of truth and reference open the way for a robust realist construal of empirical realism. Again, these principles are:

Principle of Representation. All representation of objects relates directly to the activity of judgement. 2. Principle of Experience. Experience is directed, and restricted, to an inherently structured causal world. 3. Principle of Empirical Knowledge. Knowledge pertains exclusively to experience and its possible advance. 4- Principle of the Systematicity of Nature. The inherent and systematic causal relations of the world can transcend our idiosyncratic experience of them. 5. Anti-scepticism Principle. The collective force of our beliefs about the empirical world cannot be radically false. I.

The ensuing chapters of this book are directed to interpreting these principles in conformity with the shift in epistemic

80

Empirical Realism/Priority of Judgement

perspective that Kant's emphasis on judgement engenders. The first principle is now to be interpreted in the broad context of judgement that includes the objective considerations of truth and reference. The second and third principles relate to the holistic character of representation. These principles reaffirm that nothing outside the structure of judgement at the empirical level can be included as an evidential or determining element. Principle 4 asserts that, since truth-conditions are spontaneously deployed in the original emergence of determinate representation, there is no way of ruling out the case that the relations thus attributed may transcend our capacities for verification. The repudiation of radical scepticism embodied in the fifth principle builds on the claim that truth and reference are preconditions for determinate representation. The independence of belief and truth extends as far as the possibility that our beliefs can be false on the margins. But the.idea that the complete set of beliefs spawned by the general truth-structure can en bloc be false is rejected as unintelligible. The epistemic gap between belief and reality created by the Cartesian model has no place in the Copernican alternative that prioritizes judgement and its object-involving conditions.

2

Judgement and Empirical Intuition Intuitions without concepts are blind.

2.0.

INTRODUCTION

In Chapter I we surveyed the extent to which the Cartesian epistemic model permeates the two dominant branches of contemporary interpretation of empirical realism. I suggested that against this prevailing interpretative climate we should begin our examination of empirical realism by taking seriously the radical break with the Cartesian-inspired model of cognition that Kant's Copernican revolution announces. To this end I argued that empirical realism is not just another sense-datum model of cognition buttressed with categorial forms of judgement and a priori forms of intuition. The priority assigned to judgement as the basic epistemic unit is lost if we appeal to something outside judgement (bare sensation, transcendental matter, self-individuated practices) as the epistemic intermediary between belief and the world. I argued that we can make better sense of Kant's frequent and explicit rejection of the Cartesian programme by emphasizing the priority he assigns to the object-involving nature of judgement. I suggested that the Copernican model of cognition demands both reference and truth: reference as a condition of empirical content; truth as the constraining precondition for determinate reference. These themes w~re introduced and developed in terms of the General Truth Structure (GTS). The Principles of the Analytic form the heart of this new judgement-driven epistemic paradigm. The following tWQ chapters offer an interpretation of the role of both the constituc tive principles (Axioms of Intuition and Anticipations of

!.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

I

:I,f

i! !!

il i~

I

I'

I II

i

i,

Perception) and the regulative principles (Analogies) of the Analytic of Principles. 1 This interpretation of the Analytic is intended to show how a robust form of realism emerges from Kant's account of judgement. The arguments developed in the Principles are twofold. On the one hand, Kant is developing an account of the temporal structures necessary for determinate representation. Time, being the form of inner sense, has greater priority than space in this context.2 Consequently, the discussion of temporal considerations, relating to both the manifold of intuition (empirical intuitions) and the manifold of appearance (empirical objects), necessarily takes up the lion's share of Kant's analysis. The questions that concern us here centre on the exact nature of Kant's arguments--for example, how is a determinate objective temporal structure secured, in what way is the subjective succession of apprehension derived from the objective succession of appearances, and so on? At the same time, the Principles are also Kant's account of how the categories secure perceptual content. This aspect of Kant's analysis not only addresses how the pure concepts operate, but also indicates how these pure concepts make the application of empirical concepts possible. Why do empirical concepts stand in need of a priori synthetic principles as a condition of their application? Can we make do with less? What role do the notions of substance, causality, and mutual determination play? The two interconnected tasks of the Principles can be summarized as follows: (I) to detail the temporal/spatial structure necessary for the determinate representation of objects by means of intuition3 and (2) to investigate and explain the a 1 As the Postulates of Empirical Thought do not 'augment the concept to which they are ascribed in the least' (B266), I have omitted a discussion of the regulative employment of these principles. 2 The Schematism expresses the priority of time. See Bl78 for a clear statement of the priority of temporal structure. In Chapter 3 I develop the case for an important, although limited, role for space as detailed in the Third Analogy. 3 The intersection of these two tasks is not arbitrary, as some commentators have suggested. The connection between empirical content and temporal structure in the representation of experience is a natural union. The tensed character of verbs in the grammar of natural languages gives us a parallel case in which temporal structure and empirical content go together as a condition of

Judgement and Empirical Intuition priori concept~al conditions necessary for the emergence of perceptual content. In both cases we will see that Kant's account of representation operates within the indeterminate/ determinate model introduced in the preceding chapter. Kant's analysis of cognition involves steps from initially ill-defined temporal and perceptual structure up through ever-increasing determinate .. sign-signified relations. Kant's treatment thus involves mapping out the activity of judgement, from the lowest levels, relating to the extensive and intensive magnitudes of empirical intuitions (Axioms and Anticipations), up to the existence of appearances as established by the regulative principles (Analogies) . It will be necessary also to examine in the following two chapters how the priority Kant assigns to objective considerations as a precondition for determinate representation radically redraws the received canonical dualisms of mind and nature, and the subjective/objective contrast. For example, we will find in Chapter 3 that resisting the idea that the subject operates with an ultimate source of uncontaminated data as the ground for objective judgements provides the basis for a powerful Kantian strategy for undermining the intelligibility of radical scepticism. The examination of the Refutation of Idealism will explore, in this context, the reasons why the Priority-ofJudgement approach allows us to make better sense of Kant's critique of empirical idealism than is possible on the empiricistinspired interpretation. Overall, Chapters 2 and 3 are designed to reveal how the priority Kant assigns to judgement represents both a challenge, and a potentially powerful successor, to the Cartesian legacy of inner/outer, mind/nature, scheme/content dualisms. Both chapters are divided into two sections. Section 2.1 offers a general discussion of how th~ priority Kant assigns to judgement at all levels of cognition-from the constitutive principles of intuition up to the regulative principles of appearances-liberates the interpretation of the Analytic of Principles from the Cartesian framework. Section 2.2 concerns a detailed discussion of the much neglected role of the Axioms of Intuition and meaningful representation. See Section 2.2 for more on the relation of content to temporal structure.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition Anticipations of Perception. This discussion centres on the task Kant assigns to these principles as constituting the judgementinvolving, but in itself underdetermined, basis for objective representation. The Analogies of Experience are examined in Section 3.I. The role Kant assigns to empirical 'reference and truth as conditions for the possibility of determinate inner content (belief) is a central aspect of this discussion. The Analogies will be analysed in the context of the structures they supply to the manifold of appearance, which in turn make 'the formal conditions of empirical truth' (B236) possible. Section 3.2 will focus on how, in the context of the Refutation of Idealism, the empirical realist doctrine serves to undermine the intelligibility of radical scepticism. Taken together, the Analogies and the Refutation secure the realist requirement that our beliefs about the world are rendered true or false by a mind-independent empirical domain. 2.I.

THE PRIORITY OF JUDGEMENT

In a letter to M. Herz completed two years after the publication of the second edition of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes: Outside of the immediate unity of both understanding and sensibility we should have knowledge neither of ourselves nor of other things ... But not only that; all sense data therefore would never, without those conditions, represent objects. They would not even reach that unity of consciousness that is necessary for knowledge of myself ... I would not even be able to know that I have sense-data; consequently ... they would be absolutely nothing [to me]. They could still (I imagine myself to be an animal) carryon their play in an orderly fashion, as representations connected according to empirical laws of association, and thus even have an influence on my feeling and desire, without my being aware of them (assuming that I am even conscious of each individual representation, but not of their relation to the unity of representation of their object, by means of the synthetic unity of apperception). This might be so without my knowing the slightest thereby, not even my own condition. 4 4 1. Kant, 'Letter to M. Herz, May 26th, I789', in Kant: Philosophical Corres[)ondence I759-I799, 153-4·

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

85

Although rarely stated this baldly in the Critique, the force of this passage is in step with one of the central themes of Kant's major work. The statement suggests that, unless cognition includes reference relations to empirical objects, via the Principles, no determinate inner representation is possible. As suggested in Chapter I, without the synthetic activity judgement furnishes, representations of sensation would be 'nothing to us' (AI2o), 'Jess even than a dream' (AII2) , 'for us as good as nothing' (AII~). Kemp Smith builds on this theme when he suggests: 'Only in and through relation to an object can senserepresentations be apprehended ... Relation to an object is constituted by the categories, because only thereby is consciousness of any kind possible.'s Without the Principles in play, nothing, not even a bare sensory given, can be an object of cognition. Let us call this role realized in the Principles-exhaustively constituting the cognitive connection between mind and nature-the "AIl-or-Nothing" principle of judgement. It has been" demonstrated that an important feature of this principle concerns Kant's rejection of the idea that anything can stand outside the activity of judgement and still be assigned an epistemological role. All cognition begins with the individuating power of judgement (AII4). As mentioned in Chapter I, Kant's attack on the empirical idealist tradition~that 'Hume took the objects of experience as things-in-themselves' (CPR 54)-centres on a rejection of the empirical idealist's commitment to the idea that impressions are given as things in themselves. The charge that Hume is committed to the thing-in-itself is not a blunder. What Kant is exposing is that both rationalists and empiricists share a core commitment to an intrinsically individuated realm of things-in-themselves. Empirical idealism is as guilty as rationalism in this respect. Rationalism intellectualizes appearances. The empirical idealist sensualizes the understanding. The "common prejudice" of both lies in the notion of objective reality as ultimately tied to a self-authenticated manifold (intelligible objects or determinate impressions). S Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason', 2nd edn. (London: MacMillan Press Ltd., I979), 222.

86

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

The first task before us is to unmask the influence of this common prejudice on the interpretation of the Principles. The All-or-Nothing interpretation places the rejection of this epistemie prejudice at the heart of empirical realism. To understand the nature of this rejection we need to challenge the familiar and distorting empiricist franlework that is implicitly invoked, more often than not, when the Principles are discussed. This common view maintains a commitment to interpreting the Kantian analysis in terms of a mediate connection between judgement and nature via the given. Lewis W. Beck's influential work offers a clear example of this position: affirming an epistemie role for the 'raw material of sensible impressions' that lies outside 'the conceptual and interpretative activities of the mind'.6 Let us, following Beck, call this approach to the Principles the "Lockean-Kant" interpretation? The LockeanKant position asserts an epistemic, belief-determining role for inner content (Lockean simple ideas) as a primitive point of contact between our judgements and the world.

2.I.I.

The Lockean-Kant Model

The Lockean interpretation begins by exploiting the familiar distinction Kant draws in the Prolegomena between "judgements of perception" and "judgements of experience". Recall that judgements of perception are merely subjectively valid. They concern the union of given states within the subject. As Kant suggests: 'As an ... example, we may take the following: when the sun shines on the stone, it grows warm. This judgment, however often I and others may have perceived it, is a 6 Lewis Beck, 'Did the Sage of Konigsberg Have No Dreams?' in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 40. 7 Ibid. 40"-1. Beck uses the 'L-experience/K-experience' distinction as a way of moving away from Lewis's pre-categorial account of experience (Clarence 1. Lewis, Mind and the World Order: An Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (London: Constable, 1929) ). I support this shift and wish only that he had taken the attack further. My problem with Beck's analysis is that, in adopting the LlK designation, Beck keeps faith with the empiricist epistemic model while criticizing its more extreme manifestations. See notes (below) for further clarification of Beck's position.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition mere judgment of perception and contains no necessity' (Pro!' 30I n. I2). Kant insists that judgements of perception require 'no pure concept of the understanding, but only the logical connection of perception in a thinking subject' (Pro I. 298). Judgements of perception thus render perceptual content to the mind independently of the synthesizing activity of pure concepts of the understanding. There is, therefore, an uncontaminated domain of mental content delivered to the mind directly by the senses. Kant contrasts this "subjective" domain with objective judgements of experience. These latter judgements involve the addition of pure categorial concepts (the categories). They are not only valid for the subject, but assert the existence of objective states of affairs: 'But if I say: the sun warms the stone, I add to the perception a concept of the understanding, viz., that of cause, which necessarily connects with the concept of sunshine that of heat ... ' (Prol. 301 n. I2). These judgements involve necessity and universality. They assert objective states of affairs, expressing 'not merely a reference of our perception to a subject, but a quality of the object' (Pro I. 298). Objectively valid judgement, described in this way, thus seems to involve the process of adding objectifying concepts to an already determinate subject-centred representation. When viewed in this light it does appear that Kant is subscribing to the Cartesian view that privileges subjectively accessible inner experience: Empirical judgments, so far as they have objective validity, are judgments of experience; but those which are only subjectively valid I name mere judgments of perception . ... All our judgments are at first merely judgments of perception; they hold good only for us (i.e. for our subject), and we do not till afterwards give them a new reference (to an object). (Proi.298)

This passage, and others like it in the Prolegomena, encourage a return to the broad empiricist view identified in the preceding chapter. Cognition begins with determinate subjective representations that are given without the activity of the categories. It ends with projections from the subjective to the objective domain. Subjective representation is epistemologically prior to

88

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

objective representation: 'they hold good only for us (i.e. for our subject), and we do not till afterwards give them a new reference (to an object).' This view requires and countenances the idea of an epistemological divide between a private, subjective received sensory manifold, and the e~perience of external objects. It opens an epistemic chasm between mental content and the objects of our beliefs. When the Principles in the Critique are viewed through the lens of the Prolegomena, the role of the Analytic naturally settles on the task of how pure concepts are superadded to (somehow) determinate, subjective,· mental content. 8 This interpretation of the role of the Principles is obviously at odds with the Priority-of-Judgement interpretation. As Pippin correctly points out: Kant asserts that such judgments [of Perception] do not require pure concepts of the understanding ... That, however, simply cannot be correct. It may be that these subjective judgments do not assert categorical relations, but the formulation of a determinate, even if subjective, experience would seem to require some ground of connection in appeal to categorical conditions. Otherwise the experience here being described would resemble exactly what Kant wants to rule out as an impossible account of what experience is like-a purely inner, 110ncategorical, direct experience of the flow of my sense impressions. 9

If we were to accept the Lockean description of the general task set forth in the Principles, then the Critique really would be little more than a fortified version of empirical idealism, as Pippin's comments suggest.

Ii [i

I i

S I share Allison's view that Kant abandons the Judgements of Perception/Judgements of Experience analysis in the B edition of the Critique. It is clear that Kant's claim in the Prolegomena that no categories are involved in judgements of perception simply is false. Even if we allowed determinate inner content independent of objects represented, the judgements implicit in the structure of intuition as magnitudes (Axioms and Anticipations) would still be necessary on the basis of the lessons of the Critique of Pure Reason. See Rhoda Kotzin, East Lansing, and Jorg Baumgartner, 'Sensations and Judgments of Perception" Kant-Studien, 81 (1990), for a concise discussion of the tension between the account in the P1'Olegomena and Kant's other works. Also see Beatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), ch. 7 for a detailed discussion of the connections between the Prolegomena and Critique on the issue of Judgements of Perception. 9 Pippin, Kant's Theory of Form, Ill!.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition To see where the All-or-Nothing interpretation undercuts the Lockean reading, we need to recognize that the dispute involves radically competing models of the cognitive connection between mind and nature. What lies behind the Lockean-Kant view is, I believe, an implicit acceptance of some form of the causal theory of perception. The content of representation is regarded as having a potentially informative nature by virtue of the causal "input": the propositional content being delivered to the mind independent of the beliefs of that mind. By contrast, the All-or-Nothing view is committed to what we might call a "representationfirst" model of mental content. Causal connections have a belief-constraining role from within, rather than independent of, the interpreted object-involving context of judgement. 1o We are causally connected to the world. But, on the representationfirst model, this causal relation is the wrong place to locate the source of propositional content. Information, justification, and evidence all operate at the level of beliefs, not preconceptual givenness. Uninterpreted causal connections carry no information. Nonetheless, the empiricist model of cognition has a powerful grip on6ur intuitions here. It is because the causal theory of perception is deeply embedded in our pre-theoretical model of perceptual content that it seems a natural background for postulating the non-conceptual givenness that the Lockean interpretation requires. Accordingly, I turn first to a brief discussion of the causal theory of perception in order to isolate its distorting influence on the interpretation of the Principles.

The Distorting Background Role of the Causal Theory of Perception

2.I.2.

Grice and Strawson were largely responsible for reinvigorating the causal theory of perception in the I960s and I970s. In different ways they played major roles in liberating the causal 10 The priority of the truth-constrained representation context is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition theory from the bankrupt positivist sense-datum interpretations. The causal theory was transformed into a powerful account that brings together the notion of concept application with an account of causation as intrinsic to the perceptual act. Strawson, in particular, powerfully reinforced the idea that our awareness of objects (the application of concepts for the identification and reidentification of particulars) does not preclude a causal account of mental content. On the contrary, he argued that, from the outset, the concept of causal connection between mind and nature is built into our ordinary notion of perception: The idea of the presence of the thing as accounting for, or being responsible for, our perceptual awareness of it is implicit in the pretheoretical scheme from the start. For we think of perception as away, indeed, the basic way, of informing ourselves about the world of independently existing things: we assume, that is to say, the general reliability of our perceptual experiences; and that assumption is the same as the assumption of a general causal dependence of our perceptual experiences on the independently existing things we take them to be of. The thought of my fleeting perception as a perception of a continuously and independently existing thing implicitly contains the thought that if the thing had not been there, I should 110t even have seemed to perceive it. (first emphasis added)ll

At its simplest the theory says no more than the following (regarding vision): (I) If P sees Q then: I (a) It is the case that there is a state of affairs describ-

able by a sentence of the form 'It appears to P as if

,

I 2

(b) Q is causally responsible for this state of affairs. r(a) and r(b) are contained in the general concept of visual perception. 12

The causal theory of perception is prompted by the understandably attractive idea that the content of our perceptual 11 Peter F. Strawson, 'Perception and its Objects', in E. Dancy (ed.), Perceptuill Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), I03. 12 This brief specification is adopted from William Child, 'Vision and Experience: The Causal Theory and the Disjunctive Conception', philosophical Quarterly, 42. (1992.),2.98.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

91

states is determined directly by the causal connections between our sense organs and the world. Strawson's argument centres on the idea that perceptual experiences are ways of informing ourselves about an external world. The causal connection is regarded as the fundamental and direct information-bestowing connection between mind and nature. The argument links the assumption that our sensory capacities get it right more often than not with the assumption that this capacity for veridical perception is made intelligible if, and only if, there is a "general causal dependence of our perceptual experience on the independently existing things we take them to be of". Certainly without the activity of objects on our sensory organs we would not have the perceptual awareness of objects that we do. Without a causal connection between mind and nature experience is impossible. However, this is far less than the causal theory of perception requires. The causal theorist makes the further claim that not merely is there a causal aspect to perception, but that it is just this causal connection itself that determines the content of belief. This is the force of I(b) in the above description. The causal relation is regarded as an intrinsically information-bestowing relation. As John Hyman suggests: There is no denying that we could not hear and see the sounds and sights we do if the noisy and colourful objects we perceive did not act causally on our sense organs. However, that observation concedes nothing to the causal theory; for what an advocate of the theory needs to show is, first, that the l;oisy and colourful things we hear and see do not merely act causally on our sense organs, but by doing so cause us to have sensory experiences which are correctly reported by saying something like 'It seems to me just as if .. .'; and second, that the existence of this causal chain is not a hard-won piece of scientific knowledge about ollr physical nature, but part of 'the ordinary notion of perceiving'. (emphasis added) 13

Hyman's justified worry is that the causal account fails to address the shift from merely invoking causal connection between ourselves and the world to the epistemological task of 13 John Hyman, 'The Causal Theory of Perception', Philosophical QuarterlY,41. (I991.), 1.78.

1\

II :1

II I I

!

Judgement and Empirical Intuition knowing where to look for grounding claims about the character of our mental states: when it is correct to say "It seems to me just as if ... ". Hyman's point is that "looking" at causal input is utterly misconceived as a ground for justifying belief. This objection echoes the Davidsonian argument developed in Chapter I: that sensations cannot serve as the evidential basis for beliefs independent of considerations of belief and truth. The idea of a correctly reported perceptual experience that makes reference to a first-person sensory report such as "It seems to me just as if ... ", sworn to certainty via a causal connection, returns us to the all-too-familiar empiricist conception of the senses as providing the basis for the emergence of belief. Truth, (mistakenly) regarded as the inherent correctness of the internal report, is thought to be carried over in the encounter between sensation and belief. We metaphorically point inside to the sensation as the basis for the belief. As Davidson suggests, this is to fall back into the general mistake Cartesian philosophy encourages: 'that because it is often natural to terminate the defense of a particular claim to knowledge with "1 saw it with my own eyes", all justification of empirical knowledge must trace back to sensory experience.'14 What the Lockean-Kant interpretation of the role of the Principles requires is the empiricist assumption of a purely internal psychic event: that inner content is directly the result of a causal, and immediately informative, "input". The inner state (content rendered by the Judgements of Perception) is treated as if it were like an internal report card that is filled in directly by causal processes and can be 'conceptually skimmed Off'15 the subject's all-embracing, interpreted connections with the environment. The "judgement-of-perception" reading is just beneath Strawson's words when he claims that it should be possible for us to provide an account 'which confines itself strictly within the limits of the subjective episode, an account which would remain true even if he had seen nothing of what he claimed to see, even if he had been subject to total illusion'.16 14

15

Davidson, 'The Myth ofthe Subjective', l6S. Following on the approach
290 ). 16

Strawson, 'Perception and its Objects', 95.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

93

The idea that mental content can be true or false independent of the context of world-involving judgement is a symptom, I suggest, of the empirical idealist view that mental content can be given without respect to a general truth structure: that receptivity reaches, at best, only as far as the surface of our sensory organs. This signals a return to the idea of a given thing-initself: a return to the self-interpreted atomism that Kant rejects in both its rationalist and empiricist guises. Although Strawson distances himself from the extreme positivist projective model-the existence of empirical objects is in some sense inferred, or constructed, from sense-data-he, nevertheless, continues to subscribe implicitly to the governing empiricist idea that pure subjective episodes are truth-bearing entities. There remains, I suggest, an implicit appeal to the residual force of the Cartesian epistemic model. I acknowledge that this brief characterization of Strawson's programme, and its connection to the Lockean-Kant reading of the role of the Principles, may appear to be initially puzzling. Is it not 'the case that Straws on's formulation is designed to challenge the grip of the classical empiricist framework? After all, Straws on regards his work as an attack on the idea that representation of an objective realm is possible without the a priori application of concepts necessary for the identification and reidentification of particulars. The analysis in Individuals17 and The Bounds of Sense 1S is commonly regarded as an updated twentieth-century Kantian formulation. How can Strawson's account be anti-Kantian? Does not this (apparent) tension speak against my claim that the Causal Theory of Perception has a distorting effect on our approach to interpreting the problems and answers contained in the Principles? No doubt Strawson's project is designed to challenge the sense-data theories of representation. It is in part the success of the Strawsonian project that theories so powerful in the heyday of Positivism now seem old-fashioned and outdated. My disagreement with the Strawsonian programme is not that it fails 17 Peter F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen, 1959). 18 Strawson, The Bounds of Sense.

94

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

to identify and challenge the empiricist model, but rather that it fails to go far enough. This defect is in step with what I take to be a contributory cause of the Lockean-Kant approach to the Principles. The appeal to the existence of subject-centred experiences, whose truth and falsity are purely an internal matter, has currency only because of the implicit empiricist assumptions that support this way of carving up the original epistemological situation. Strawsonian concept-endowed subjective experience comes to play the same broad role as the old sense-datum arguments of more traditional empiricists. Epistemic intermediaries-pure subjective episodes-do the informative, justificatory labour of connecting experience with what it is experience of. The causal theory of perception, and modern empiricism, are, on my view, mutually supporting theses. They share a common Cartesian heritage. They grow out of a commitment to the idea that perceptual experience is the product of informative and evidential connections between beliefs and sensations. Hyman, echoing Davidson and McDowell, puts it well when he suggests: The distinctive epistemology that the causal theory incorporates ... I submit, is false. A perceptual verb that is used in response to an epistemic challenge ('Fred is smartly dressed today.' 'How do you know?' 'I can see him.') does not invoke the corroboration of a psychological episode. My reply defends my right to make the original statement; but not by introducing any sort of evidence at all. How then? By affirming that the opportunity conditions [truth-conditions] do in fact obtain: he really is visible from where I am sitting (contrary to what you might suppose), because there is a mirror on the wall behind you ... When I say what I can see or hear ... I affirm a proposition for which no other proposition provides [sensory] evidence. A perceptual statement is not supported by another describing a psychological episode. 19

The deeply ingrained Cartesian epistemic tradition is not easily discarded. The dualisms of the Cartesian model, as Hyman goes on to suggest, run so deep that even critics of the tradition (like Strawson) run the risk of remaining within its grip: 19

Hyman, 'The Causal Theory', 293.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

95

There is also the idea that the exercise of any human power can be bisected into two streams, one purely mental, the other involving our bodies and our environment. The illusion that this conceptual manceuvre is a feasible one has been attacked by many eminent philosophers this century, including Strawson. But something like a failure of nerve must have prevented the attack from being pressed home, for the very same illusion lies at the heart of the causal theory, which requires that we perform precisely this manceuvre when we offer a 'strict account' of the experience that our senses grant us. {emphasis added)2°

The failure of nerve Hyman identifies in the above passage mirrors the point introduced in Chapter I-namely, that the Cartesianepistemic framework, with all its epistemological demons and false promises, is still largely in play even among those who, like Strawson, repudiate some aspects of the tradition.1t is just this faulty epistemology, with its appeal to the priority of subjective psychological episodes as the basis for perceptual judgement, that I have called into question. The idea that accounts of perception, particularly the causal account of mental content, are dominated by what Straws on himself calls "the pre-theoretical scheme"-read Cartesian scheme-should be acknowledged and resisted.

2.I.3. Liberating Kant from the Lockean Reading

Let us bring these remarks on the causal theory of perception back to the Lockean-Kant reading of the Principles. How do these remarks connect up with the priority Kant assigns to the role of judgement? The dispute between the Lockean and All-Of-Nothing interpretation centres on whether it makes sense to include a private, "in-the-head" conception of mental content as an epistemologically significant feature of cognition independent of considerations of reference and truth. The essence of the debate centres on the question of whether we in fact need the object-oriented judgements that the regulative principles (Analogies) secure in order to have determinate inner content. Do we need reference to objects as suggested in Chapter I? 20

Ibid. 291.

,ii I

I:

Judgement and Empirical Intuition In response, consider how Beck develops his influential reading. To "save" Kant from the misguided claim that all experience (including dreams and illusions) must have objective reference, Beck suggests that a profitable way of reading the Critique is to identify the .Prolegomena's "judgements of perception" with "Lockean experience", and its "judgements of experience" with "Kantian experience"; In B we read: 'There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. For (otherwise) how should our faculty of knowledge ... work up the raw material of sensible impressions into that knowledge of objects which is called experience?' In the first sentence 'experience' means 'the raw material of sensible impression', the manifold of apprehensions or Lockean ideas without the conceptual and interpretative activities of the mind. In the second sentence 'experience' means 'knowledge of the objects' and does perhaps, in Lewis's expression, 'coincide with the phenomenally real' .... One way of reading the Critique of Pure Reason is to see it as an allswer to the question: how do we move from L-experience to K-experience?21 Kant's distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience is analogous to that between L-experience and Kexperience. 22

We are now in a position to see that the "L-experience/Kexperience" interpretation of the Critique is just the faulty empiricist topology applied to the Kantian system: the epistemic analysis is animated by an inquiry into how it is that we move from determinate inner representations to knowledge of independently existing empirical objects. The Cartesian dualisms of scheme/content, subjective/objective are in full force. If we begin at Br of the Critique within this framework, only a distorted picture can emerge. It should be of little surprise that it is just at this juncture-the point at which subjectively valid representation is transformed into objectively valid judgement-that the Kant of the secondary literature becomes a bumbler capable of 'non sequiturs of numbing grossness', of 'fatuous problems and solutions', and of 'committing errors on

21

Beck, 'Did the Sage', 41.

22

Ibid. 49.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

97

every page' Certainly Kant is guilty of some of the charges made against him. The Analytic of Principles is a dense piece of work. The connections between it and the categories are not always a model of clarity. Overall, though, I believe these remarks speak more to the frustration of trying to fit a nonempiricist project within the confines of an implicitly empiricist interpretative framework than to genuine inconsistency and mind-numbing errors of logical argument on Kant's part. 24 Although "all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience". This is the beginning of t:he beginning for Kant. Experience and its structure serve as the epistemic centre of gravity. Rather than beginning with "L experience" and "K experience", the investigation of the Analytic of Principles should begin where Kant begins: with the idea that determinate inner sense is itself dependent on the immediate experience of outer objects, and, by extension, is dependent on the necessary conditions for the possibility of these objects of experience. This, as introduced in Chapter I, is how Kant's transcendental idealism reverses the empirical idealist's "inside-outside" model: Idealism [material] assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and that from that outer things could only be inferred, but, as in any case in which one infers from given effects to determinate causes, only unreliably ... Yet here it is proved that outer experience is really immediate, that only by means of it is possible ... inner experience. (B277)

The Lockean interpretation of empirical realism-with its appeal to a domain of insulated "L-experience" as the content that connects mind to world-remains mired in the empiricist framework. 23 See, in order, Strawson, Bounds o(Sense, 28; Terrence Wilkerson, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: A Commentary (or Students (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976),71; Jonathan F. Bennett, Kant's Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. viii. 24 There really is a disturbing hubris in the frequent suggestions that Kant's work in the Principles is full of undergraduate errors in reasoning. That Kant taught logic for thirty years, wrote frequently on the subject, and presented arguments the subtlety and construction of which are rarely matched should go some way to casting doubt on the appropriateness of interpreting Kant in this fashion.

".\

Judgement and Empirical Intuition 2.I.4. Avoiding an Appeal to the Transcendental Veil

One way of deflecting the charge I have levelled against the Lockean-Kant view is to stress the difference between Kantian empirical intuitions and empiricist sensations. 25 This defence of the role of the given begins by acknowledging that empirical intuitions are represented as extensive and intensive magnitudes. As such, they involve low-level judgements rather than self-given impressions. The identification, for example, of a red patch in one's senso~y field involves the synthesis of parts that make up the "given" patch. Accordingly, it involves part/whole structuring in its apprehension (Axioms). The shade of red perceived involves the immediate apprehension of the patch as situated in a continuum of intensities, deeper than pale pink, lighter than ruby red, and so on. Sensations are not, as in the empiricist model, merely given to us. As Beck himself suggests, the idea of representing experience without the application of the Principles is no more than 'dumbly facing chaos without even knowing it'.26 Contra the standard empiricist reading, bare sensation is recognized to be, in itself, a chaotic rhapsody. H. Robinson announces a similar theme when he suggests that, 'if per impossible we were to examine this material prior to, and in the absence of the application of the categories, it would be incoherent to US'.27 By stressing the transcendental nature of the tole of the given in Kant's system, the revised Lockean reader might hope to distance himself from the empiricist problem. We no longer have uninterpreted empirical input, but instead have transcendental input delivered in some quasi-causal manner to judgement and then converted into empirical intuitions. Empirical intuitions then do the kind of informing work that was previously attributed to the empiricist treatment of sensation. 25 Apart from C. I. Lewis's interpretation of immediate experience as precategorial, I think it is fargely agreed that Kantian intuition already involves the low-level judgements of extensive and intensive magnitudes. See Mind and the World Order. As we see below, Beck himself rightly claims that we can have no access to content prior to it being synthesized into intuitions. 26 Beck, 'Did the Sage', 54. 27H. Robinson, 'All or Nothing in Objective Judgment', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 65 (I984), 38r.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

99

Unfortunately this admission does little to unseat the empiricist interpretative agenda. On the contrary, this defence of the Lockean interpretation is an unadulterated version of the empiricist template, now transplanted to the transcendental domain. Despite the break with the received view of empirical content implicit in the acknowledgement that the lowest level of cognition involves judgement consonant with the constitutive principles,2s the empiricist framework maintains its interpretative hegemony. It is the role assigned by the revised Lockean interpretation to the "chaotic rhapsody" as input that is crucial here. Although we cannot represent to ourselves any order in this given matter, we are urged to accept, as a "transcendental fact" that this material must have determinate intrinsic structure. This underwrites the now reformed role of the given. How else, it is s\.Jggested, are we to account for the tremendous coherence and unity the world exhibits, and make sense of the intersubjective agreement we enjoy, if not by means of a shared and uncontaminated primitive given? In other words, despite the fact that we cannot determinately represent the pre-cognitive given, we are, nonetheless, entitled to attribute to it an unknowable, but transcendentally necessary, intrinsic order. As H. Robinson suggests: We deduce that this ... differentiation must occur: how else are we to avoid the arbitrariness, explain the recalcitrance of appearance to the will, account for agreement among different knowers? But observation of this differentiation is simply not possible. For if all unity, and hence intelligibility, is produced by the imagination in accordance with the categories, the raw sensory manifold ... is per de{initionem unintelligible ... The original operation of the imagination on the rhapsodic manifold is something we can only infer; we cannot introspect it. 29

The refitted Lockean interpretation thus parallels the ultimate realist position outlined in Chapter 1. Walker's description - of this primitive point of contact between belief and noumenal reality addresses the same epistemic point: 28

I offer an account of the Axioms and Anticipations in the following sec-

tion. 29

H. Robinson, 'The Priority of Inner Sense', Kant-Studien, 79 (1988),

177-8.

IOO

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

it is a striking fact, and one on which our conception of an objective world depends, that the perceptual judgements made by different subjects mesh in quite remarkably well with one another ... This striking agreement demands explanation ... for what is to be explained is itself a noumenal fact: that different subjects make similar perceptual judgements, share similar perceptual beliefs ... So although we cannot know what things-in-themselves are like, it is reasonable to postulate such things to account for the data given in experience. They exist, and must have properties of their own prior to our synthesis.30

Walker and Robinson stress that one cannot be conscious of the evidential connection between the· given and the activity of judgement. The Lockean interpreter acknowledges that "dumbly to face chaos" is literally to say, and think, nothing. Their argument now becomes a second order inference that moves from the order and unity experience exhibits to the assertion that there must be a corresponding order and unity in the material presented to judgement. If the given were, in itself, a genuine "blooming, buzzing chaos", a mere flux of ever-changing material, then the rules for synthesis, applied consistently, would, it is argued, produce an equally chaotic product when we "convert" it into empirical intuition. Very generally, the argument has the same constructivist force. as the relation between computer input and output. If we all have the same basic software, and all produce (roughly) the same output, then we can infer the existence of shared and determinate input. Similarly, since experience reveals a tremendous degree of intersubjective unity, we can infer the presence of intrinsic order in the given manifold, even though we can never have actual access to this preconceptual input independent of the cognitive processes of apprehension. Robinson and Walker direct a good deal of philosophical attention to the task of explicating why it is that we reach an impasse when trying to represent this primitive point of contact between the given and our beliefs about the world. 1 suggest that the deep problem concerns not how to defend the notion of a primitive confrontation between the two, but the more basic problem of the dubious nature of the epistemic framework itself in which an intermediary role for transcendental input is required. 30

Walker, 'Empirical Realism', 173-+

'1,

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

ror

I claim that, in rightly calling the given "utterly chaotic", we are in effect highlighting the fact that there is ~ no truth of the matter with respect to it. Where truth is not at stake, it makes no sense to cling to the view that this transcendental matter still (somehow) determines the low-level judgements rendered by the Axioms and Anticipations. Although Robinson and Walker put the putative information-bestowing connection (between supersensible reality and the cognizing subject) behind the veil of appearance-the "effects" of things-in-themselvesthe dominant framework is still one in which an informative relation is required between 'something' that has no propositional content,and the beliefs of the subject. I suggest 'that, as the 'given' has no propositional content, it cannot be used as a vehicle for conceptually necessary, but unknowable, truthpreserving judgements, as the revised Lockean view requires. Then~ is no "information" to be passed along. There is nothing to carry up into belief. Describing the given as a chaotic rhapsody, while still employing it as an epistemic intermediary, is no more than a confused and camouflaged appeal to the precritical epistemic paradigm. This is why the Lockean-Kantian interpretation fails. In it the given continues to serve as the basis for the determination of belief, although, as a non-conceptual content, it fails to offer a constraint on the autonomy of the belief-relations of evidence, justification, and informativeness. 31 Consider, for the moment, how belief is fixed in our engagements with the world of empirical objects. Our beliefs emerge and develop in the context of the dispositions and powers we assign to the objects of our beliefs. We say that the canoe paddle propels the canoe because we implicitly assign a rough and general truth structure in our perceptual acts; the water in the 31 The awkwardness of Beck's L,experience!K-experience analysis is manifest in hiRattcmpt to resolve the connection between judgements of perception and judgements of experience. He claims that 'the judgment (of perception) is subjective in content (it is perhaps abollt my subjective L-experience) but objective in its claim to your credence' ('Did the Sage', 5I). Beck is clearly on the right track in attacking Lewis's pre-categorial account of experience. \Vhat blunts Beck's attack, in my opinion, is the use of the UK epistemic topology, which too closely mirrors the judgement of perception/judgement of experience Prolegomena distinction of which Beck is critical. /

i

j !

1

I

I

I

102

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

river has as part of its material disposition a high degree of viscosity, the paddle is solid and wide enough to allow us to draw it against the water. 32 Here, as in all cases, our empirical judgements operate in perceptual, truth-constrained, contexts. The understanding,33 in its empirical and pure capacities, spontaneously supplies this. The informative and evidential connections operate among beliefs we hold true. These pertain to objects, their powers, and dispositions (substance, cause and effect, mutual determination). We attend not to bare sensations, but to our beliefs about objects and their powers.

2.1.5. McDowell contra Evans: Lessons from the Attack on Non-Conceptual Content

I think we can gain some purchase on the relevant issue Kant is isolating by looking at the modern conflicting views of Gareth Evans and John McDowell on the role of non-conceptual and conceptual content in the case of perceptual experience. Evans claims in his influential book, The Varieties of Reference, that perceptual experience involves a nonconceptual component. In our judgements about the world, we move from a cognitive state that involves non-conceptual content to a cognitive state that is conceptual in nature: The informational states which a subject acquires through perception are non-conceptual, or non-conce1Jtualized. Judgements based upon such states necessarily involve conceptualization: in moving from a perceptual experience to a judgement about the world (usually 32 1vluch of this activity is so automatic that it goes 011 without much consciolls involvement. There is a good deal of evidence for this in contemporary empirical psychology dealing with language use and perception. Priming effects in language use indicate that semantic connections are deployed often in a preconscious way: masked priming offers evidence for this effect. In visual perception we become aware of unconscious activity in those cases where the object observed is in some way ambiguous. Gestalt psychology provides a bounty of such examples (vase or two faces, rabbit or a duck, etc.). In these cases, when the images flip from one assignment to another, we are aware of the spontaneous role of concept application. 33 The requirement for unity in the manifold of appearances will also be developed with respect to thc activity of reflective judgement. See Chapter 5:

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

I03

expressed in some verbal form), one will be exercising basic conceptual skills ... The process of conceptualization or judgement takes the subject from his being in one kind of informational state (with a content of a certain kind, namely, non-conceptual content) to his being in another kind of cognitive state (with a content of a different kind, namely, conceptual content). 34

Evans is careful not to claim that we have conscious experience of non-conceptual content. He contends, rather, that the informational state represented by non-conceptual content is a primitive (non-conscious) contribution to the conscious, cognitive equation: such states are not ipso facto perceptual experiences-that is, states of a conscious subject. However addicted we may be to thinking of the links between' auditory input and behavioural output in, informationprocessing terms ... it seems abundantly clear that evolution could throw up an organism in which such advantageous links were established, long before it had ptovided us with a conscious subject of experience. 3S

Leaving aside the naturalistic account of the order of the development of conscious and non-conscious states, relevant for our purposes is Evans's claim that we should regard the conceptually determined sphere of experience as linked to nonconceptual content. Evans's claims that we arrive at conscious perceptual experience when sensory input is not only connected to behavioural dispositions in the way I have been describing ... but also serves as the input to a thinking, conceptapplying, and reasoning system; so that the subject's thoughts, plans, and deliberations are also systematically dependent on the informational properties of the input. 36

Thus the domain of conceptual content is determined, at least in part, by the intrinsic character of the non-conceptual content encoded in the input offered by the non-conscious "information" state.37 This is the whole point of Evans's claim Evans, The Varieties of Reference, 227. 35 Ibid. I57-8. Ibid. ISS. 37 Christopher Peacocke, A Study of Concepts (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, I992), offers another development on this theme. Fundamcntal to Pcacoc~e's theory of what counts as an explanation of concept application is 34

36

I04

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

that thinking and concept application systematically depend on the inherently informative character of the non-conceptual input. Evans's ground-breaking work has been well received for many reasons, including the fact that it seems to accommodate the thrust of contemporary cognitive science (information states and the like) without jettisoning the domain of epistemology (unlike Quine's brave new world). It is, in the admiring words of John McDowell, a smooth, 'naturalistic account of perceptual informational states'. 38 Nonetheless, what we find in Evans 2s approach is structurally similar to the argument I have developed explicating the LockeanKant reading of mental content. What we have is an account of conceptual content that is rooted in something that lies outside the sphere of the understanding's deployment of concepts. Consider McDowell's misgivings with Evans's approach in this respect. McDowell claims: In Evans's account of experience, receptivity figures in the guise of the perceptual element of the informational system, and his idea is that the perceptual system produces its content-bearing states independently of any operations of spontaneity [concept application]. It is true that the content-bearing states that result count as experience ... only by virtue of the fact that they are available to spontaneity. But spontaneity does not enter into determining their content. So the independent operations of the informational system figure in Evans's account as a separable the requirement of non-circularity. According to Peacocke, the explication of the ground for the possession of a concept should not presuppose possession of the concept as part of the explanation. Consider the perceptual concept "straight". 'What matters to my position is that if we are to have a noncircular and individuating account of mastery of the perceptual concept straight, that mastery must be related to some feature of experience that does not have to be explained in terms that presuppose possession of the concept' (pp. 85~-6). Peacocke's account thus focuses on possession conditions as the basis for the individuation of concepts. These in turn fix semantic values by means of a determination theory. The determination theory is fundamental, for it makes the belief-forming activities specified in the possession condition always yield true beliefs and it licenses the inferential principles found in the possession condition as truth preserving. Concerning the role of non-conceptual content, "positioned scenarios" and "protopropositional content" bear much of Peacocke's analysis in the context of perceptual concepts. See 11. 73 below for additional discllssion of non-conceptual content in Peacocke's analysis. 38 McDowell, Mind and W orid, p.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

IOS

contribution made by receptivity to its co-operation with spontaneity. (emphasis added)39

McDowell's worry is that Evans, despite his attempt to overcome standard empiricist "givenness" models, fails ultimately to renounce the governing principle: that something outside the frame of the conceptual (that is, the non-conceptual content of an information state) can exert content-bearing friction against the conceptual domain (domain of spontaneity). The n011conceptual C01'J.te11t of the information system serves, for Evans, to ground, in part, the experiential judgements that we make. This is not overturned by Evans's claim, and others like it, that 'when the subject wishes to make absolutely sure that his judgement is correct, he gazes again at the world ... he does not in any sense gaze at, or concentrate upon, his internal state'.40 While the conditions for the verification of a claim's correctness are public and concept driven, there remains at the centre of Evans's account an appeal to an inherently non-conceptual information state. McDo~ell correctly points out that, while Evans denies that we can introspect upon the non-conceptual content of the information states independently of applying the requisite concepts, Evans nonetheless claims that concept application is "informed", and "based upon" the presence of non-conceptual content. Non-conceptual content is thus a separable contribution impacting upon the otherwise autonomous domain of empirical judgement and rational reflection. 41 Ibid. 40 Evans, The Varieties of Reference, 22.7. McDowell, Mind and World, 53. It should be noted that appeals to information states, like Evans's, that are, in part, non-conceptual are in the ascendancy in contemporary philosophy of mind. Now popular modular accounts of cognition are much better at explaining, for example, sensory illusions. Most perceptual illusions are immune from reflective, conceptual penetration. Optical illusions like the Muller-Lyer line drawings, or Penrose's impossible figure, continue to offer the same (misleading) contents independent of the conceptual repertoire we deploy. Modular accounts of cognition can explain the persistence of this phenomena with appeals to primitive processing that is preeonceptual; or is at least not penetrable by high-level conceptual contributions. Evolutionary accounts of brain development also point to a split between low-level processing (which we share with many other animals) and higher-level conceptual activity (a relative newcomer). These issues pose serious problems for an account of cognition that denies a role for nOI139 41

I06

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

Replace Evans's notion of an information state with the Lockean-Kantian idea of transcendental matter presented to the understanding as content, and you have a position structurally similar to the position I have been claiming Kant is intent on rejecting. The lesson in bqth cases is that a pure received "manifold" has no propositional content or truth-value. No doubt the Lockean and ultimate realist interpreters believe that this connection in Kant's system is a "transcendental" concern, thereby seeming to divorce this form of analysis from the above criticisms of its empiricist cousins. 42 Nevertheless, the broad empiricist framework is still hard at work, only pushed back a step: now connecting the representation of empiri~al reality with a (putative) noumenal, rather than phenomerhl, \ given. In fact, if we are strict about the matter, we find that the ultimate realist and Lockean interpreter are, ironically, the purer of the empiricists, since the move beyond the empirical domain is sustained by an inference whose only source of support is the pure epistemological structure of the empiricist framework itself. All empirical supports are de facto withdrawn. 43 The argument thus hangs entirely on the empiricist assumption that belief has an informative connection to pure givenness: transcendental matter constituting the most pure form of the given. Without this epistemic commitment, there is no reason or need to argue backwards from the unity and order of experience to the unity and order of the "transcendental" given. If this empiricist presupposition is withdrawn, and if therefore the intelligibility of the chaotic given as the basis for determining belief is rejected, the argument collapses. conceptual informational states. I acknowledge that this seems to put Kant (on my reading) on the sharp edge of the razor. One way out is to follow McDowell's lead and claim that these low-level processes are part of the perceptual machinery, but not part of an epistemology of belief (Mind and World, 121). See Section 3.2.3 for more on the problem of explaining perceptual error. 42 This is the conventional division "Lockean~Kantians" invoke when distinguishing their programme from the standard empiricist project. 43 It is perhaps because of the implicit empiricist framework that ultimate realists argue, quite consistently, that appeals to transcendental matter should not keep the ultimate realist outside the liberally minded wing of the empiricist camp. On my reading, ultimate realists genuinely belong at the high table of empiricism. Each share the broad framework that demands a belief-constrainconnection between the given and thought.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition I; 2.1.6. Challenging the Priority of First-Person Reports

I have suggested thus far that we should approach the Principles of the Analytic in a way that resists the appeal to givenness. I have stressed that Kant's account of the conditions for the possibility of experience is best understood by appealing to the involvement of object-centred considerations. An obvious problem with this All-or-Nothing approach to the process of representation is found in our frequent experiences of objects that do not, in fact, exist. Experience is fraught with examples of intuitions unconnected to the things they represent. Dreams and illusions seem obvious candidates. How can this be possible if, as I have suggested, Kant is committed to the view that we never have access to empirical intuitions apart from the objective states Qf affairs they represent? Moreover, since intuition is subject-centred-it is the property of an individual mind-should it not be the case that we cannot be wrong about our internal states? Might not the asymmetry of internal and external states reintroduce the troubling subjective/ objective reading promoted by the Prolegomena's "judgements of perception/judgements of experience" dichotomy? The long answer to these related questions is developed in Section 3.2. We need elements from both the constitutive and the regulative principles of the Analytic to be in place. Nonetheless a preliminary response to the question of the status of first-person reports is instructive and necessary before we discuss the constitutive principles from the perspective of the All-or-Nothing reading. The epistemological sanctity of first-person reports is, in considerable part, the heritage of the Cartesian separation of content from reference relations. Descartes's project begins with content firmly established. The Cartesian epistemological task is bound up with the quest of finding a secure bridge from this content to corresponding objects. The All-or-Nothing approach rejects this dogma. The emergence of content takes place in the context of judgement(s). Consider, for a moment, the common experience associated with any camping trip in North America. Apart from gorgeous

lO8

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

views and rugged terrain, the one sure thing one can expect is the familiar mosquito infestations. Half of one's time is spent swatting before being bitten. Imagine being outside one's tent and suddenly feeling a prick in the arm. One feels a sharp pain. 44 In disgust, one turns away, tenses the arm, and goes looking for the calamine lotion. What could be more real than this empirical intuition of pain? How could we be wrong about this? The representational assignment seems to move from a purely inner experience, causally informed, to an objective judgement about our state. Obviously we have had a real experience; something has happened. Provided our sensory organs are operating normally,\we can attribute some sort of causal connection between the wP'rld and ourselves. In this case, the content of our belief seems t6 be read directly off the causal input. As with so many experiences, the belief seems to be informed and constrained in an inside-outside manner: from sensations transparently evident to us, to beliefs about external objects and their relations. We assume, as it were, that the experience is a private matter, and that the informative content of the belief arises causally. To challenge this way of carving up the epistemic situation, it is useful to begin with what may appear to be an odd question, but one that I believe teases out the relevant distinctions. In the described case, are we in the best place to judge what we have experienced? Here we want to argue backwards. "Well, of course I was not in the best place to see what happened; I wasn't looking at my arm but at the fireplace. But I felt the pain, and surely that's as good as seeing the mosquito." I infer from the pain that the mosquito landed and punctured the skin. The experiential judgement appears to work from the inside out to the world. This, I suggest, is a partial and ultimately misleading description of the epistemic situation. Let us take the story a page further. I find that, as I winced, my friend was looking across the table and saw the ladybird land on my arm. He was surprised 44 This approach is developed fully in Nagel, The Structure of F>xperience, ch. 4. My remarks follow on his. The case is the most difficult case for the judgement-centred approach, as pain states seem to be the most transparent and immediate mental contents possible.

i'

Judgement and Empirical Intuition to see me wince .and more surprised when I asked him to help find the calamine: all things being equal, a genuine ladybird cannot bite (unless you unluckily happen to be an aphid). What has actually occurred in the above case is that I have misapprehended the light touch of a ladybird landing for the sensation of pain. I have "experienced" a false sensation. False not because I was inattentive or over hasty when viewing the inner theatre of "self-evident" experiences, but false because I can now judge using world-involving terms that no such pain was in fact caused: all things equal (truth-condition structure in place), the light touch of a ladybird does not cause pain. A "false" sensation is a misjudgement, not a self-given material "error" .45 Empirical intuitions are not vehicles for truth-values. They neither lie nor tell the truth. They do causally connect us with the world, but this connection is not an evidence-conveying relation. Their contribution operates within, and is subordinate to, the sign-signified representational context. Kant puts the point well when commenting on the nature of error: For truth and illusion are not in the object, insofar as it is intuited, but in the judgment about it insofar as it is thought. Thus it is correctly said that the senses do not err; yet not because they always judge correctly, but because they do not judge at all. Hence truth, as much as error, and thus also illusion as leading to the latter, are to be found only in judgments, i.e., only in the relation of the object to our understanding. (B349-S o)

In the following section we will discuss Kant's account of error as it relates to empirical intuition. For the moment I wish simply to draw attention to the fact that the priority-of-judgement approach also carries with it a renunciation of the priority of the first-person accounts of knowledge that fall out of the Cartesian framework. I want to suggest that the priority attached to beliefs as the ground for evidence also has implications for the statlls of ascriptions of inner states. The determination of the belief that we have had a particular experience operates with respect to the evidential connections we invoke between ourselves and the objects oJ our beliefs. As G. Nagel suggests: 45

This important theme is examined in Section 3.2.

110

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

Our natural tolerance in respect of first-person accounts of inner matters that leave little evidence should not be taken as consent to the privacy theses of Descartes and Hume. People let my claims about my inner states stand unchallenged because no one has much evidence of what I feel, sense, or think, except in so far as my inner states pertain to matters with externally observable consequences. But, a fortiori, I too can have little evidence on such private and inconsequential matters. Where no one else can be in a place to overrule my account, I am in no place to defend it. Sure, it is what I seemed to feel or sense or think, but, in the absence of available determining evidence, no one (me included) can tell whether it is what I actually felt or sensed or thought. Should there be available evidence, I lose my special status in the matter. It is then up to anyone to judge what the circumstance is, vyhat sensations it will arouse in one situated as I am, how those sensations may \ be apprehended ... and hence which of my apprehensions'will correctly bring into my consciousness what is in fact given to me in sense, and which will distort what is given. 46

First-person interpretations of our inner states have no epistemic priority over third-person interpretations. Where conditions of judgement concerning evidence are lacking, the seems-right/is-right distinction breaks down. Where this distinction fails, knowledge of the world, and our experiences in the world, also fail. This does not mean imparting anything as ridiculous as denying experience to people on desert islands, and so on. Instead it reinforces the claim that the determination of inner states requires interpreted, truth-constrained connections between the world and ourselves as a condition for the emergence of our beliefs about our inner states. Without these, there is no sense to the notion of correctly bringing into my consciousness what is in fact given to me in sense. Only with worldinvolving objective determinations in play can we introduce the notion of correct or incorrect apprehension. As Kant repeatedly says, sensation 'is not itself an objective representation' (B208): truth and error are to be found only in judgements, not in sensations (B349). Pure inner episodes thus are not the ultimate ground for belief, true or false. Our private subjective states fail to stand outside the sphere of judgement. They are not epistemologically prior to judgement. 46

Nagel, The Structure of Experience,

219.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

III

Daniel Dennett, echoing Kant's attack on the Cartesian epistemie model, suggests: 'We don't first apprehend our experience in the Cartesian Theatre and then, on the basis of that acquired .knowledge, have the ability to frame reports to express; our being able to say what it is like is the basis for our "higher-order [internal] beliefs". '47 Important background considerations for the All-orNothing argument are contained in the familiar Wittgensteinian argument against the intelligibility of construing knowledge claims in terms of judgements that refer to purely private states. 48 As Bird suggests: It is easy: for empiricists to doubt whether we have a right to assert objective claims . . . Kant's negative intention is to reject sllch an empiricist doubt, for the ideal on which it is based, that of a language which expresses only and exactly the content of our sensible experience is, on Kant's view, mistaken ... his rejection of it is a special case of the view that a private language is impossible. 49

Bird's interpretation affirms the kind of bridge I see operating between Kant and Wittgenstein in their attack(s) on the viability of the empiricist appeal to purely inner states as the basis for establishing knowledge of an external world. sO The 'seemsright/is-right' distinction, essential for the viability of knowledge 47

D. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little Brown Publishers,

1991), F5. While I agree with Dennett's powerful attack on Cartesian ism,

Dennett's positive project (a form of operationalism) has very little connection to Kant's approach. 48 A number of commentators have asserted the existence of connections between Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the Critique. The priority of judgement and logic makes this connection compelling. Although I do not develop the point directly, there remains, even through Wittgenstein's later works, the continued presence of a priority-oF-judgement motif. Wittgenstein's attack on scepticism (On Certainty) is a particularly good example of how a judgementfirst approach silences the radical sceptic. Of course the similarity between Wittgenstein and Kant can easily be overplayed. Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the transcendental standpoint in all of his post-Tractatus work-something that strikes against the core of ICant's approach. Nonetheless, at the thematic level of the determinative role of judgement there is a good deal of common ground. 49 Bird, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, I66·~7. 50 It is for perhaps this reason as well that Kant's empirical realism has been equated with some contemporary anti-realist programmes. Both share a common enemy.

I12

.Judgement and Empirical Intuition

claims, demands more than the internal reports formulation genuinely can deliver. It is with object-involving considerations in place that the necessary distinction between correct and incorrect judgements of our inner intuitions becomes possible. For our purposes, the parity of first- and third-person interpretation has less to do with the demand of the publicness of procedural constraints-although this is important-and more to do with the claim that determinate cognition demands world-involving terms as a condition of its possibility. Within the compass of Kantian concerns, the point I have been raising echoes the earlier claim of Kemp Smith that 'only in and through relation to an object can sense-representa~ibns be apprehended . . . Relation to an object is constituted- by the [application of] categories, because only thereby is consciousness of any kind possible at a11.'51 Although I am endorsing a repudiation of the privileging of first-person reports associated with Cartesianism, it would be a mistake to take the Kantian position further in the Wittgensteinian-inspired direction. 52 The Wittgensteinian approach, I believe, remains within an important subgroup of the empiricist tradition. On my view, it succeeds only in putting off the day of reckoning with respect to the notion of the given. No doubt it gives up on the bottom-up sensation model advocated by empiricists. But in place of this it substitutes a quasi-behaviourist account of publicly observable practices; something quite foreign to Kant's approach. The chief difficulty with the Wittgensteinian approach is that, unless the significance of practices is (somehow) directly written on the face of public discourse, we, I suspect, once again fall victim to an account that fails to explain the individuation demanded by the model itself. In other words, the Wittgensteinians have the difficult (perhaps impossible) task of accounting for how it is that we carve up the motions of individuals (and other objects) in ways that successfully parcel out their behaviour. Like cmpiri-

Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason, 222. The epistemic humanists push in this direction. See in particular L. Stevenson's work. Sl

52

Judgement and Empirical Intuition cist analysis generally, the Wittgensteinian account begins the epistemic story a chapter or two from the beginning. 53

Z.L7. Exorcising the Empiricist Template The fundamental point of my questioning the common Lockean-Kant interpretation has been to expose certain pretheoretic epistemologicaL commitments that I believe are brought to bear implicitly in the interpretation ofthe role of the Principles of the Analytic. I have suggested that we can more profitably} explore the Principles if we highlight the Kantian commitment to the idea of an immediate connection between mind and nature: between mental content and things represented, rather than between an uninterpreted given and the body of our beliefs. Truth, interpreted in this latter distorted context, is implicitly construed as the accurate "mirroring" of a self-authenticating internal experience. This, as we have seen, is to fall back into the common mistake encouraged by the empiricist framework: 'that because it is often natural to terminate the defense of a particular claim to knowledge with "I saw it with my own eyes" all justification of empirical knowledge must trace back to sensory experience.'54 In the Kantian context, we should resist the "L-experience/K-experience" model that emanates from some of Kant's remarks in the Prolegomena primarily. The determination of subjective perceptual judgements demands that we judge the report to be true-of-theworld, and not somehow immediately "true" to inner sense as the sensation-belief model encourages. Receptivity is outward looking. Accordingly, the rejection of the Cartesian epistemic model (not surprisingly) involves altering the order empiricists bring to Kant's "judgements of perception" and "judgements of 53 To be fair, a Wittgensteinian is not likely to be put off by this remark. As Wittgenstein claims, 'It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better, it is difficult th begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back' (On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 47I). 54 Davidson, 'The Myth', 165.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition experience" dichotomy.55 Reversing Beck's terminology, we might put the case better by saying that "Kantian experience" is a precondition for "Lockean experience".56 In other words, the idea that determinate representation requires that intuitions are combined in the concept of an object should be regarded as Kant's way of highlighting the claim that cognition begins with a spontaneously represented objective whole--"Kantian experience"-determined and constrained by the dispositions and powers we assign to empirical objects. By inverting the standard reading of the "judgement of perception"I"judgement of experience" model, we can see that the idea of private givepnesswhether in terms of sensation, transcendental matter or intuition divorced from the things it signifies-is,\on the Kantian view I advocate, little more than an empiricist prejudice with a Cartesian pedigree. It is the demands of truth and reference that make determinate representation possible. Here there can be no halfway house. Certainly, our knowledge does 'arise from two fundamental sources' (B74): the power to receive sensations from objects, and the power to know an object by means of these sensations. But it is no more than empiricist chauvinism to interpret this distinction in terms of the schemelcontent dualism that divorces content from considerations of reference and truth. We can make more sense of Kant's Copernican revolution if we take him at his word when he suggests that all knowledge begins with experience: experience of objects, not sensations. As Kant remarks: 'Appearances are the only objects that can be given to us immediately, and that in them which is immediately related to the object is called intuition' (Aro8-9). Belief begins at home. Our epistemic home is in the world of empirical objects, not empirical intuitions. We can sketch an outline of the All-or-Nothing interpretation as follows: (I) the connection between the manifold of intuition and the manifold of appearance is the sign-signified relation of representation, (2) the sign-signified relation between the manifolds of intuition and appearance operates to individuate 55 This reversal is adopted by Gerold PrallSS (Erscheinung bei Kant (Berlin: de Gruyter, 197I), 253}. 56 Beck comes close to this reeognition himself: 'Did the Sage', 47.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition experience via the attribution of truth-conditions for all perceptual contexts, (3) these truth-conditions specify the conditions under which a belief is held to be true, pertaining to objects, their dispositions, and powers, and (4) we are conscious of determinate inner intuitions as the causal effects of objects only within the general representational context. The following section undertakes the difficult task of determining the correct role of the Axioms of Intuition and Anticipations of Perception in the All-or-Nothing model.

2..£. THE AXIOMS OF INTUITION AND THE ANTICIPATIONS OF PERCEPTION: THE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF EMPIRICAL INTUITION 2.2.0.

Introduction

The All-or-Nothing account of judgement introduced above creates a troublesome interpretative dilemma. On the one hand, the Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perceptions involve judgement. These judgements are designed to supply the rudimentary temporal structure and empirical content of intuition. These judgements thus yield empirical intuition(s). On the other hand, the product of these judgements is not, in my estimation, the first line of conscious, cognitive engagement with the world. Intuitions without the higher-order temporal and content-determining relational principles (Analogies) yield nothing at all to consciousness. They are, as Kant says, blind. They are not the ground for inferences to objective judgements. They are not the cognitive equivalent of the atomic sensedatum reports. They do not offer an informative or evidential basis for objective representation. As we have seen, the attack on the Cartesian theatre model of mind is designed to banish just these empiricist-inspired epistemic prejudices. By shifting the locus of representation away from the sensation-to-belief model, and simultaneously emphasizing the activity of judgement as a determining aspect of empirical intuition, a serious problem emerges concerning how correctly to interpret the role we assign to the Axioms and Anticipations in

II6

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

Kant's system. They seem to fit uncomfortably between the empirical-idealist view that epistemology includes a bare given that is taken up in judgement, and the Davidsonian view that sensation has no role in epistemology and involves no cognitive activity. If determinate representation really is an All-orNothing affair, then what place should we assign to the manifold of intuition and the principles that secure it? How do we accommodate something that embodies judgement but, without the regulative principles (Analogies), would be nothing at all to us? Perhaps the best way out of this dikmma is to acknowledge from the outset that, while we cannot objectively represerftthe indeterminate level on its own-for this would require the higher-order determinative principles of the Analogiesnonetheless we can make intelligible why it is the case that lowlevel judgement must still be at work at this level of cognition. In other words, we can, following Kant, explore how the structures of empirical intuition reveal the underlying activity of judgement without having to accept that these judgements render, on their own, cognitive content to the mind. In this way, the inability to visualize the contribution of judgement at this predeterminate level will be seen as a problem only if we accept the dubious claim that every level of cognitive activity should be introspectively accessible. Why should the ability to introspect (the ghost of Cartesianism again) directly on the content of every level of judgement be the sine qua non of a viable description of the lower levels of cognitive activity? Modern cognitive science is flush with examples of spontaneously deployed cognitive processes that operate at the preconscious level. We should not be barred, therefore, from investigating the preobjective role of the Axioms and Anticipations merely on the grounds that the content and temporal structure that they yield is made fully determinate only with the regulative principles (Analogies) in place. The reading of the Axioms and Anticipations developed below also challenges the Davidsonian view that judgement has no role in the determination of the nature of intuition. To think intuition involves no cognitive activity is to throw out the epistemic baby with the empiricist bath water. On my VIew,

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

II?

Davidson's denial of any epistemic role for the deliverances of experience is as equally one-sided as the idea that all beliefs are ultimately grounded in atomic sense-datum reports. If there is a fourth dogma of empiricism, it is perhaps the belief/sensation framework itself-a dichotomy that even Davidson does not entirelyescape. 57 Kant, unlike Davidson, recognizes that empirical intuition is not bereft of cognitive significance and structure. The Axioms and Anticipations are designed to reveal how judgement operates at even this predeterminate stage of belief. By rejecting any role for sensation," and placing the burden entirely on belief, Davidson, one could argue, unwittingly affirms the initial validity of the Cartesian sensation/belief template. Davidson's castingoff of any role for sensation does not constitute, on its own, a repudiation of the original contrast between a structureless given and an organizing scheme. On the contrary, like the empiricists, Davidson accepts that sensation is devoid of any conceptual contribution. Unlike the empiricists, he omits it for just this reason. But in accepting the original contrast pair, Davidson keeps the faith. Kant's analysis is freed from this forced disjunction. Empirical intuition, the lowest level of cognition, reflects the activity of judgement. Kant thus agrees with Davidson that there is nothing outside the domain of judgement that informs belief. But, Kant insists that we also acknowledge that the lowest level of cognitive engagement with the world entails structures that refer to the activity of the mind. The Axioms and Anticipations are, in effect, Kant's attempt to argue backwards from determinate representation (Analogies) to the indeterminate initial structure of empirical intuition. 58 In other words, 57 Although I disagree with McDowell's reading of Kant in Mind and World-he has a broadly Strawsonian picture, which I believe keeps McDowell from recognizing the close affinity between his own positive view and Kant's-I do agree with his claim that Davidson remains wedded to a dualism that forces him to repudiate the possibility that judgement operates at the level of our receptivity to the deliverance of the world. See Mind and World, particularly Afterword, part 1. 58 I agree with Bird that the exposition of the role of the constitutive principles might have profited if Kant had begun with the Analogies and then argued his way back to the Axioms and Anticipations. See Bird, Kant's Theory

of Knowledge,

151-2.

II8

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

Kant is sensitive to the fact that, when we divide experience by the regulative principles (substance, cause and effect, mutual determination), we are left with a remainder: we are left with the task of explaining the structure (conceptual and temporal) found in the empirical intuitions themselves. This interpretative strategy is not open either to empiricism or to the opposing radical interpretation model offered by Davidson. 59 The problem that Kant and the interpreter face is how determinately to represent a temporal and content-determining structure that is, intrinsically indeterminate-that is, that cannot be made fully intelligible withOJlt introducing objective notions that do not, themselves, belong to this level of cognitive structure. Even Kant, as we shall see, is occasionally guilty in the explication of this indeterminate realm of illegitimately introducing object-oriented principles. 60 We can model what Kant is trying to accomplish in the Axioms and Anticipations in terms of what an artist does when trying to disengage the objective features implicit in a representation of the world from the sensory basis of the representation. Although we see a world made up of objective spatial features (rectangular buildings, circular roundabouts, parallel driving lanes), the sensory signs that serve as the basis for these objective representations are anything but rectangular, circular, or parallel. The retinal images are trapezoid, elliptical, and convergent at a distance. An accomplished artist is able to disengage the sensible sign from the object signified, detaching the actual sensory mode of expression from the objects represented. The difficulty of this task speaks directly to the point made earlier. Experience pertains directly to objective considerations-to things signified, and not immediately to sensory 59 I am uncertain how McDowell's non-conceptual account of cognition in Mind and World connects up with Kant's account of the structures and judgements of empirical intuition. McDowell seems to place rather too much emphasis on empirical matters in his account of the sensory mode of cognition. More recently, in his Woodbridge Lectures, McDowell offers a much more sensitive reading of the role of Kantian intuition. But on the particular Kantian issue of the involvement of the categories and resulting principles as the grounds for the emergence of empirical intuition, McDowell pulls back and leaves this task for another day (p. 465). 60 See the following section for examples.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

II9

signs. 61 We attend immediately to the things we see, not to the (sensible) mode of presenting the objects. 62 Intuitions without higher-order objective concepts are blind. The blindness of intuition does not forestall the possibility that, with objective concepts in place, we can look backward to the sensory intuitions and find structures (extensive and intensive magnitudes) that, like artefacts, show the activity of pre-objective judgement(s). On the contrary, this is the representational remainder left over when Vl(:e divide experience by the regulative categories. The "artist-disengagement model" provides a useful way of representing how Kant's analysis works-recognizing that, while original representation is object involving, there are also structures reflected in the intuitions themselves that indicate low-level cognitive involvement. The Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception are Kant's response to the need for addressing this pre-objective role of judgement.

2.2.1.

What are the Formal Structures of intuition?

The collective thrust of the Axioms and Anticipations is that all empirical intuitions are structured as extensive and intensive magnitudes. In the second edition, the Axioms claim that 'all intuitions are extensive magnitudes' (B202). The Anticipations assert that 'in all appearances the real, which is an object of the sensation, has intensive magnitude, i.e., a degree' (B207)' What do these definitions mean? fn much of the secondary literature, the explication of these principles has bordered on the dismissive. 63 The Anticipations 61 One need think only of how a concert pianist reads the sheet music for an example of how we look through the sensible sign to the signified object. 62 Perceptual illusions like the "Ames distorted room" offer good empirical evidence against the view that perception is simply a bottom-up process. In the case of the Ames room, we see a room as rectangular even though the actual stimulus is trapeziodal (the "room" is constructed in a way that mirrors the retinal image, which for rectangular objects is in fact trapeziodal), This kind of (spatial) contextual framework is part of what I group under the notion of a each other general truth structure: that cognition concerns objects, causally, in an objective spatialltemporal manifold. 63 Prichard thinks these principles are of 'little intrinsic importance' (Kant's Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I909) , 265). Strawson

120

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

receive almost no comment in the standard works on the Critique. Where attention is directed to these principles (which, it should be stressed, constitute one half of the entire Analytic of the Principles), it has fallen to the Axioms. Much of this discussion concerns the connection between extensive magnitude and formal mathematics. 64 No doubt the connection is important. The Axioms offer Kant's answer to the question of why the study of mathematics has application to the world of empirical objects. We find that the formal structure of the part/whole relation of empirical intuition expresses at the same time the pure (temporal) notion of number (the synthesis of the homogeneous). Kant describes the constitutive p'rinciples as "mathematical" to draw attention to the fact that they have the intuitive certainty of mathematical judgements (B20J).65 I will say more about this below. For the moment I wish to stress that by concentrating merely on the formal character of the Axioms-how they yield abstract knowledge of the forms of intuition (principally (temporal) successiveness and its connection to all mathematics)-we fail to. appreciate the principal role of the Axioms: the task of securing the extensive magnitude evident in all empirical intuitions. The concentration on the formal character of mathematical reasoning has had the unfortunate effect of burying the role of judgement as the basis for the possibility of empirical intuition(s). What then is the role of these forms of judgement in yielding empirical intuition?

I

regards the connection of these principles to the Analytic as tenuolls at best (Bounds of Sense, 31). Although Pippin (Kant's Theory of Form) offers an extended discllssion on sensation and intuition, he fails to introduce more than a few paragraphs on the constitutive principles. Even Allison's comments in Kant's Transcendental Idealism add up to little more than one page. 64 Strawson argues that these principles 'are largely concerned with the applicability of mathematics' (Bounds of Sense, 122.). More recently, Guyer has argued that the Axioms are concerned primarily with the measurement of magnitudes (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, ch. 7). The concern with measurement is a common theme among interpreters. See Bennett, Kant's Analytic. 65 Although it is often overlooked, Kant immediately qualifies this designation by claiming that 'But one should note well that I here have in mind the principles of mathematics just as little in the one case as the principles of general (physical) dynamics in the other ... I am therefore titling them more with respect to their application than on account of their content' (B2.o2.).

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

I2I

Consider the (unpleasant) experience of having poison ivy. There are two kinds of considerations that go into the judgement regarding how one feels. First one is concerned with the number of places that have come into contact with the ivy: the more places, the worse one feels. Here one determines one's state by adding up the infected patches. The determination of the state is thus an aggregate of infected locations: moving from the parts to the whole. The second relevant aspect concerns how intensely one feels the itching sensation at each location. One does not feel an itch as an all-present or all-absent event. The sensation has a degree. Mild irritation and perhaps a few bandages will do. Welts and it is time to get medication. These two features of sensation exemplify what Kant means by expressing the structures of empirical intuition in terms of extensive and intensive magnitudes. Extensive magnitudes concern the serial structure~the "and-next" relation~of intuition. 66 Objects of consciousness, in so far as they are extensive magnitudes, involve the representation of the whole in terms of the representation of the parts. As Kant says: I call an extensive quantity that in which the representation of the parts makes possible the representation of the whole (and therefore necessarily precedes the latter). I cannot represent to myself any line, no matter how small it may be, without drawing it in thought, i.e., successively generating all its parts from one point, and thereby first sketching this intuition. (B203l

Extensive magnitudes are thus determined· as aggregates. Judgement synthesizes, through successive additions, from parts to the whole. The case is different with intensive magnitudes. Apprehension of a quality occurs in one moment. The intensity of the sensation is not an aggregate of lower-grade irritations. Instead, one is immediately conscious of the determinate degree each quality of sensation exhibits. We experience an irritation that fits somewhere in the continuum of possible itchiness: "this much, not less and not more." The apprehension of 66 For a powerful treatment of the "and-next" relation, see Nagel, The Structure of Experience, eh. 4.

I22

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

quality is instantaneous rather than serial. In Kant's words, the apprehension of 'the real in appearance always has a magnitude ... this takes place by means of the mere sensation in an instant and not through the successive synthesis of many sensations, and thus does not proceed from the parts to the whole; it therefore has a magnitude, but not an extensive one' (B2IO). Intensive magnitude is thus immediate: it yields a quantity that is entirely expressed in one moment of time (is non-serial). All empirical intuitions are structured in terms of both kinds of magnitude. Sounds are extensive magnitude (hotes one after another in time) and intensive magl'litudes (lou'ct; soft). Tactile responses have a serial character (we run our hand over the rough bit) and a degree of force (rough or smooth). Even scents reveal extensive magnitude (you draw the scent in time) and intensive magnitude (strong or mild). These cognitive structures are constitutive of all empirical intuitions.

2.2.2.

Empirical Content and Temporal Structure in General

I have suggested that the principal task of the Axioms and Anticipations is Kant's concern with examining the activity of judgement reflected in the structures that are exhibited in all our sensory engagements with the world. Like all the principles of the Analytic, the Axioms and Anticipations are the expression of the synthesizing activity of pure concepts. These concepts express the contribution of the pure forms of judgement. It is the application of these pure concepts, under the constraint of the forms of intuition (principally time), that stands at the heart of the activity of judgement at this level. How does Kant draw in temporal features into the discussion of empirical intuition? That we should expect temporal structure to run alongside the determination of empirical content is not an arbitrary or fudged connection, as some commentators have suggested. 67 The connection between empirical content and temporal struc67 See Ralph Walker, Kant (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978),91-5; Wilkerson, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 76; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 194.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

12 3

Wre is a natural union. Even the Positivists, with their energetic commitment to the virtues of empiricism, could not themselves avoid connecting the two. The foundation for their account of knowledge begins with dated particulars. Kant recognizes the fundamental role of temporal structure from the beginning. Experience is not determinately given without the application of concepts that establish rudimentary temporal structure. Certainly we can change our assessment of orderings as new events present themselves. Nothing is set in stone. But without the basic scaffolding of temporal structure, experience itself is not possible. 68 Within the pattern of Kant's analysis, the role of temporal structure is central. As we shall see in detail in Chapter 3, the necessity of an objective temporal order goes hand in hand with the possibility of representing determinate empirical content. At the most general level, it is the connection between the categories and temporal structure that is the subject of Kant's cautious move from the Categories to the Principles via the Schematism. Whatever else we may think about the connections Kant establishes between judgement and the Principles, to Kant's credit it should be emphasized that he makes no assumptions about the two. Wilkerson's claim that Kant invents a fatuous problem that he then tries to solve is an ill-conceived attack. 69 Kant does not simply assume that the application of judgement in experience necessarily conforms to its pure formal nature. On the contrary, as Kant points out, even the most basic features of judgement do not carryover to experience unless we take account of the forms of intuition. The law of contradiction, the sine qua non of formal logic, is continually violated if we omit form-giving temporal considerations. As Kant remarks: 68 Hume's all too seductive blurring of these fundamental and subtle distinctions is, I suggest, in large measure responsible for obfuscating the crucial distinction between subjective and objective temporal order. Even sympathetic commentators of Hume grant that Hume's analysis of the conceptual and temporal connection necessary for the individuation of events is insufficient. See David Pears, Hume's System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 178-9; Peter F. Strawson, Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.), I32.. 69 Wilkerson, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 7I.

124

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

In the Axioms we can see clearly how temporal structure and empirical intuition are connected. The part/whole structure the Axioms determine in the synthesis of empirical intuition-the successive synthesis of parts that make up the whole-mirrors the part/whole structure apprehension determines for the homogeneous manifold of inner sense (time). Just as a line is cognized by the successive additions of its parts, it is 'exactly the same with even the smallest time. I think therein only the successive progress from one moment to another, where through all parts of time and their addition a determinate magnitude of time is finally generated' (B203)' In other words, the structure that judgement enforces in the empirical intuition (part/whole relation) is the same structure it generates in our cognition of the serial character of time. The empirical and the formal share this judgement-enforced structure: one structure expressed in two interrelated domains. Not surprisingly then,

Judgement and Empiricailntuition

12 5

the infinite divisibility of any object represented by means of our form of external sense (that no part is a simple, but each is divisible into halves, halves into halves, and so on) mirrors the infinite divisibility of any represented time. Both are continuous quantities. Each can be divided infinitely many times. The critica,l upshot of Kant's argument is that rudimentary empirical content and temporal structure are the product of a single determinative principle. We, in Kant's words, 'generate time itself in the apprehension of the intuition' (Br82). This determination requires the schematized concept of the synthesis of the homogeneous. This schematized concept is Number. Number represents the unification of the homogeneous through a serial relation. Number is 'nothing other than the unity of the synthesis of a manifold of a homogeneous intuition in general .. .' (Br82). Kant's architectonic is entirely consistent, and a guide for lIS, on this point. The pure concepts of the judgement of quantity (Universal, Particular, and Singular) find their experiential counterparts (Unity, Plurality, and Totality) expressed in the first Principle of the Analytic (Axioms of Intuition) via the pure schema of Number. Number is the pure schema of quantity because it is the representation of the successive addition of the homogeneous in general. It is this "and-next" relation that determines both empirical content as an extensive magnitude, and the rudimentary temporal structure of subjective succession. The form of inner sense and the rudimentary structure of empirical content naturally go together. The determination of an extensive magnitude requires the temporal structure in which the synthesis from the parts to the whole is represented. The rudimentary structure of empirical content and temporal order are thus both the product of determinative judgement. The Axioms of Intuition express this pre-objective cognitive involvement.7° What is the corresponding role of the Anticipations? 70 The temporal structure of time series is not itself objective. Objective temporal succession requires time order, which is provided by the Analogies. See Br84-5 for the different transcendental determinations of time supplied by the Schematism. A discussion of this difference is developed below.

11 "

126

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

Like the Axioms, the Anticipations concern the structurebestowing activity of judgement. The Anticipations are designed to complete the task of accounting for the rudimentary framework of empirical content and temporal structure in the manifold of empirical intuition. \ The reason Kant calls this principle an "antidipation" is twofold. He is reminding the reader that this principI~, like the Axioms, concerns the predeterminate manifold of intuition. No reference to the objective considerations that are born at the regulative stage (Analogies and Postulates) is permitted. Secondly, the title reaffirms the priority Kant attaches to judgement as the focus of analysis. It is the structure of intuition (intensive magnitude) determined by judgement that is anticipated. The theme that has informed much of our analysis thus farthe Priority of Judgement-is carried forward forcefully in the Anticipations. Like the empiricists, Kant agrees that 'sensation (as matter of perception) . . . cannot be anticipated at all' (B209). The Anticipations are therefore not anticipations of sensation, since 'sensation is always merely empirical and cannot be represented a priori at all ... ' (B217). What is anticipated by the principle is the cognitive structure in which sensation, in general, is realized as an empirical intuition. As mentioned above, apprehension of the qualitative character of intuition occurs immediately. The intensity of the sensation is not an aggregate of parts. What is experienced are quality kinds-that is, redness, hardness, and so on. These are apprehended in degrees of intensity: ruby red, bright red, pale pink, and so forth. They fit somewhere in the continuum of the relevant quality kind. Empirical intuition is not apprehended in a bipolar manner. The irritation of the poison ivy occupies a place on the continuous scale of possible intensities. This structural feature of intuition, Kant insists, indicates the role of judgement in the original act of apprehension. How does temporal structure figure in this account of the structure of intensive magnitude? In a dense passage in the Schematism, Kant connects the two by emphasizing the importance of the form of inner sense (time) as that which grounds the structure of the continuum

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

I27

within which intensive magnitudes are apprehended: 'the schema of a reality, as the quantity of something in so far as it fills time, is just this continuous and uniform generation of that quantity in time, as one descends in time from the sensation which has a certain degree to its disappearance or gradually ascends from negation to its magnitude' (BI83). The notion of "filling a time" is simply the idea that the material of sensation is apprehended in a single moment. Kant wishes to emphasize that this presence of sensation as intuition is the product of a temporal structure that makes the qualitative judgement possible. In the above passage Kant is not claiming that when we apprehend a quality we must actually imagine, in time, the possibility of the sensation increasing or decreasing in magnitude. That is purely an empirical matter. The salient feature is rather that this temporal structure is implicitly operative in the instantaneous apprehension of intensive magnitude. We can imagine the quantity of the intensive magnitude diminishing to zero: the shade of red gradually washing out to pink, or the sound of a loon's call gradually fading out. This ability (employed or not) indicates a mode of judging. The idea that empirical intuition involves intensive magnitudes helps answer two related questions. The first question is left over from Hume: his missing shade of blue problem. 71 Hume candidly admits that, if we are presented with every other shade in a colour's continuum, a missing shade can be represented even though we have no corresponding impression relating specifically to this idea. This, of course, is a serious problem for the sensation-to-belief model. If ideas can be represented without corresponding impressions that ultimately justify them, then the priority of the given as the ultimate source of evidence begins to look misplaced. Kant's approach offers an explanation for the possibility of filling in the missing shade. On Kant's view, because all empirical intuitions belong to continuous scales of possible intensities, our ability to imagine a shade not yet experienced follows directly from the nature of having any empirical intuition. Our 71 Hume's "singularly unimportant" missing shade of blue problem (An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, 3rd edn., ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), sect. If, r6).

I2S

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

ability to represent the missing shade flows from the nature of judgement in the original apprehension of the intuition. The lowest level of cognition thus already exhibits the kind of cognitive structure that makes qualitative identity: possible in apprehension. We do not, as the empirical idealist believes, receive sensory simples that give rise to ever mcire complex aggregates. Instead, unity enters from the beginning in the synthesis that renders the qualitative nature of intuition possible. We do not, as it were, apprehend sensations as self-identified particulars and then form unities based on similarities between them. On the contrary, the apprehension of sensation demands unity (in the quality kind) as a condition of representing the particular sensation: "this shade of blue rather than that shade of blue". The continuous structure of inner sense (time) and the continuous structure of intensive magnitudes thus equally reflect the activity of judgement at this low level of cognitive involvement. The principle of intensive magnitude expresses this cognitive structure. A related, contemporary epistemological issue is also anticipated in Kant's approach to intensive magnitude. This problem concerns the charge made by those who, like Evans, support a non-conceptual account of content. The worry expressed is that the rich character of content delivered by experience cannot be captured by the concept repertoire available to anyone subject. As Evans suggests: 'Do we really understand the proposal that we have as many colour concepts as there are shades of colour that we can sensibly discriminate?"72 The complaint is that a concept-driven account of representational content fails to do justice to the fine-grained character of that content.73 Evans, The Varieties of Reference, 229. It should be noted that this complaint is not universally acknowledged, even by those who support a non-conceptual account of content. See Peacocke, A Study o{Concepts, 83-4, for a good example of a theory of content that finds no seriolls problem with the fine-grainedness of concept application. Peacocke argues that 'it would be a nonsequitur to move from the premiss that there cannot be two experiences differing in representational content but not differing in their conceptual representational content to the conclusion that nonconceptual representational content is redundant. Even if the premiss is true, the COI1CItIsion could still be false if nonconceptual representational content is needed in the philosophical explanation of the perceptual-demonstrative concepts used in arguing for the premiss' (p. 84). The fact that a conceptual account of 72

73

.Judgement and Empirical Intuition

I29

It is because Kant puts the apprehension of empirical intuition within the sphere of the conceptual domain that this charge stands ,as much against his approach as against contemporary accouhts of conceptual content such as McDowell's. Kant's response to Hume's missing-shade problem answered the question of how we can imagine a content without a corresponding sensation. Evans's challenge moves in the other direction: can we attribute to a subject as fine grained a repertoire of concepts as We have contents? Here, McDowell's response is informative even though he makes no direct reference to Kant. McDowell stresses that it is the discriminatory concept of being a shade of colour that offers the solution. It is true that we do not have ready, in advance of the course our colour experience actually takes, as many colour concepts as there are shades of colour that we can sensibly discriminate. But if we have the concept of a shade, our conceptual powers are fully adequate to capture our colour experience in all its determinate detail.74

The force of McDowell's response is to target the background view that content is present to consciousness in a primitive manner that is unconn,ected to capacities that range beyond the particular content present. He claims that the notion of a conceptual capacity extends beyond a particular sample (this or that shade): "We need to be careful about what sort of conceptual capacity this is. We had better not think it can be exercised content can accommodate the rich character of perception does not count against the non-conceptual position. As mentioned in a previous note, much of Peacocke's analysis is motivated by the worry that a conceptual account of content inherently fails as a mode of explaining the content of our perceptual judgements because it operates with concept possession conditions already (implicitly) in play. Peacocke looks to non-conceptual protopropositional content as the proper place to locate the grounds for the discrimination delivered by concept application: what allows us to discriminate the same content as either a square or a regular diamond involves consideration of correctness delivered by the competing proropropositional contents. I share McDowell's concern that bringing in correctness is to bring in truth-consideration, which is a highly conceptual matter. Protopropositions occupy a ve(y difficult (perhaps impossible) role between bare content and conceptual content. For the most recent exchange on the issue of non-conceptual content, see Peacocke, 'Nonconceptual Content Defended', and McDowell, 'Reply to Commentators'. 74 McDowell, Mind and World, 58.

I3 0

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

only when the instance that is supposed to enable its possessor to embrace it in thought is available for use as a~sample."75 He drives home this point by asserting that: ,~ \Ve can ensure that what we have in view is genuinely recognizable as a conceptual capacity if we insist that the very same capacity to embrace a colour in mind can in principle persist beyond the duration of the [particular] experience itself ... What is in play here is a recognitional capacity, possibly quite short lived, that sets in with the experience. It is the conceptual content of such a recognitional capacity that can be made explicit with the help of a sample ... If such recognitional capacities are conceptual, Evans's question.does not have the answer he thinks it does.?6

Of course Kant would deny McDowell's assertion that this capacity is in any way "short-lived" as Kant places this capacity at the heart of the apprehension of the empirical~ intuition itselF7 Empirical intuitions are present to the mind only after having been the subject of intensive magnitude judgements. This mode of judging guarantees that the fine-grainedness of any possible empirical intuition will have a corresponding conceptual scale of intensive magnitudes. There is, in fact, no limit to the degree of discrimination available. Take any two shades of blue, and judgement can supply a shade between these. Take that middle shade, and we can now imagine a shade midway between it and either of the other two shades. This process is, in principle, without end. 78 Of course, we will not have names, or standing concepts, for these empirical intuitions before we experience them. But that charge misses the point. Kant's claim is that the apprehension of even one empirical intuition of a McDowell, Mind and World, 58. 76 Ibid.57-8. McDowell develops his point in the context of memory capacities; that this capacity 'goes on being exploitable as long as it lasts, in thoughts based on memory' (Mind and World, 58). This seems to me to confuse what should be a description of the nature of the conceptual capacity with the empirical conditions under which this capacity operates. 78 See Nagel, The Structure of Experience, 97-9, for a detailed account of how we can 'generate [aJ whole spectra of qualities from a few examples and the relations of comparison that obtain between them' (p. 97). My brief remarks closely follow Nagel's more detailed analysis. Nagel, I think correctly, connects the unbounded character of these possible judgements with the "infinite" category of judgement that Kant identifies with intensive magnitudes. 75

77

.Judgement and Empirical Intuition

13 1

particular quality kind entails a potentially infinite number of fine-grained 'distinctions. We thus have a guarantee that the richness of content cannot outstrip our conceptual capacities. The thoroughly conceptual character of perceptual content at the level of empirical intuition offers a powerful rejoinder to the non-conceptual content challenge posed by Evans and others. The above explication is no more than a sketch of the argument Kant presents for these two principles. More would need to be said fully to insulate this interpretation from the various challenges that Ultimate Realism and Epistemic Humanism are likely to mount. My goal in this section has been simply to outline the structural components of intuition as they reflect the activity of judgement.

2.2.4. Contrasting the Indeterminate/Determinate Distinction with the Subjective/Objective Divide Before concluding this discussion it is necessary that I introduce a point of clarification concerning what is meant by the suggestion that the Axioms and Anticipations yield only indeterminate, pre-objective temporal structure and content specification. It is important to emphasize that the notion of the indeterminate temporal structure supplied by the constitutive principles does not pair, in the empiricist sense, with the notion of subjective temporal order. The indeterminate/determinate contrast pair is not the same as the empiricist subjective/objective dichotomy. In the context of the Axioms it may be tempting, for example, to think that the serial "and-next" relation of apprehension (Axioms) is akin to the objective succession relation of inner sense discussed in the Second Analogy. If, as the empiricistminded interpreter believes, the central task of the Kantian analysis is to supply a way of shifting from determinate subjectcentred inner order to intersubjective objective temporal order, then one might be tempted to interpret the results of the constitutive principles as creating a determinate inner, but only subjectively valid, temporal order. This would be consonant with the standard reading of the Judgements of Perception/

r3 2

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

)

Judgements of Experience distinctions of the Proleg6mena. Moreover, as this discussion would then seem to duplicate half of the discussion in the Second Analogy, many commentators have suggested, for just this reason, that we should ignore the constitutive principles and concentrate instead on the r~gulative principles. 79 This is a mistake. Empirical realism, as I have developed the position, begins with the commitment to objective considerations as the ground for the possibility of representing a determinate inner order. The structure of the manifold of intuition is labelled indeterminate because, on its own, it does not provid"e the temporal structure and content specification that secures determinate representation assignments. It is the task of the regulative principles to lay down the requisite objective temporal and conceptual structures that make unique representation possible. Without these worldinvolving constraints, the radical underdetermination of content and temporal structure entails, as Kant states in his letter to Herz, that 'I would not even be able to know that I have sense data'.8o We can gain a richer appreciation of the extent of the underdetermination problem by noting how the serial "and-next" temporal structure secured by the Axioms fails to give rise to the notion of objective inner succession. What does Kant mean when he distinguishes "time series" (serial structure) from "time order" (objective succession) at Br84-S? As we have seen, Kant rejects the Cartesian view that subjective apprehension is intrinsically determinate. The epistemic task is not one in which we have- consciously determinate, subject-centred serial order in apprehension from which we try to determine which adjustments would create the most rationally compelling objective successive order. The difference between the serial ordering of the Axioms and the successive ordering of the Analogies is more profound. As Nagel remarks, 'the mere succession of subjective times only suggests the proper ordering 79 Wilkerson suggests that the Constitutive principles are of 'no great interest' (Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 70). Strawson maintains that 'their connection with the general themes of the Analytic is tenuous' (Bounds of Sense, 3I ). 80 Kant, 'Letter to Herz', in Kant: Philosophical Correspondence I759-I799, I 53-4.

.....

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

I33

of times. First thi~, then that, then that and so on-the and next relation of succession-could as well take us in circles as in a straight line. '81 The mere serial nature of apprehension does not, on its own, deliver any objective temporal orderings. In fact, the problem of underdetermination is even more severe than N agel's comments suggest. Without some background objective temporal notions, even the bare 'subjective' serial relation cannot be made fully determinate. For example, it is correct to point out that serial order may loop back on itself as in the case A-B-C-D-AB-C-A-B, etc., because the "and-next" relation includes no consideration of the objective identity of each temporallocation in the synthesis. But, in addition to this problem, I suggest we run into problems even with the determinate representation of the loop itself. Without objective considerations of identity and order, we never in fact get beyond the changing moment, A, ~A. We cannot, as it were, represent even the determinate order of a "loop" of time by means of the mere "and-next" relation of the Axioms. The serial relation offers merely the identity relation of one moment to an undifferentiated moment other than itself. The representation of the bare serial structure of the subjective order of apprehension is achieved only by smuggling in the notion of objective succession as the structure in which the "subjective" activity occurs. This claim echoes a point Nagel himself makes with respect to the underdetermination of the manifold of intuition: They [the constitutive principles) go some way toward characterizing the part/whole structure of time, and toward the securing of content that is needed for the determinate representation of time; but they do nothing to establish duration, order, and simultaneity . Nothing may be too strong a word; but not enough is too weak. There are anticipations of duration, order and simultaneity in the temporal structure of intuition, but they are far short of the full notions of objective temporal relation. 82 81 Nagel, The Structure of Experience, II3. The 'and-next' designation is Nagel's useful expression for emphasizing the temporal structure enforced by this mode of judgement. I have borrowed this designation throughout. 82 Ibid.

134

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

It is because the constitutive principles fall short oHulI determinacy that objective notions must be employed for purposes of explicating their intrinsically indeterminate, but necessary, role. The fault lies neither with Kant nor with commentators like Nagel. The analysis of the rudimentary temporal structure that informs the successive character of apprehension cannot, for reasons of intelligibility, avoid invoking background objective considerations: a loop is an objective judgement. Consequently, the task of explicating the role of the constitutive principles is strikingly difficult. All we can do is try, as far as is possible, to decouple the object-determined relations from the rudimentary structures that operate at the intrinsically preobjective level. In short, the serial relation posits no more than the identity condition for moving from one time to another. This is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for what follows later in the Second Analogy's account of objective succeSSlOn. The temptation to introduce intrinsically foreign objective categories at this level of temporal structure also reveals itself in Kant's (mistaken) inclusion of the concept of affection in his explication of the Anticipations. As Kant himself admits, the concept of causality, at this level of judgement, is wholly misplaced: reality in an appearance has intensive magnitude, i.e., a degree. If we regard this reality as cause (whether of sensation or of another reality in the appearance, e.g., an alteration), then one calls the degree of reality as cause a 'moment' ... because, indeed, the degree designates only that magnitude the apprehension of which is not successive but instantaneous. But I touch on this here only in passing, for at the present I am not yet dealing with causality. (B2IO)

It is not surprising that Kant invokes the concept of causality in explicating intensive magnitude, since it is just this notion that correctly informs the empirical consciousness of quality. If one feels the effects of the poison ivy more intensely, it is because one's sensory organs are responding to a world that is affecting them in a more robust manner.83 Now, we can try to subtract much of the objective (empirical) story. We can, as 83

Causal connections have a place within a representational context.

"'

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

I35

Kant does, redescribe the situation in terms of the connection between the subject "and an object in general". We can also abstract from the particular sensation (itchiness), and focus on the structure of "sensation in general". But there is, I suggest, no way of entirely decoupling the objective notion or causal connection from the notion of how an intensive magnitude is brought to consciousness. This is to be expected, if, as I have suggested, the consciousness of empirical intuitions is a second-order reflection derived from object-oriented representation. The representation of the structure of intuition in terms of degree, and the empirical explanatory idea that this degree corresponds to the influence of the world on our sensory organs, are natural bedfellows. The explication of the role of low-level judgement necessarily incorporates the world-involving context of objective judgement. What should be resisted is the interpretative temptation to transpose the world-involving character of objective judgements required for the explication of this form of judgement onto the intrinsically pre-objective status of the judgement itself.

2;2.5.

OVERCOMING VERTIGO

i ;1

The idea that the low-level structures of the manifold of intuition relate ultimately to the character of judgement and not to the intrinsic structure of a pure given manifold (sensation or transcendental input) can seem unnerving to the empiricistminded interpreter. Philosophers committed to the idea that noumenal reality serves as the transcendental ground for empirical concept application are likely to feel that any move to renounce the (putative) connection between belief and the given will de facto imply that we have 'cut [our]selves off from reality'.84 This feeling of epistemic disconnection is bound up with the denial of the scheme/content dualism that informs the Cartesian epistemic framework. If, in some fundamental way, the structure of intuition (temporal and content specific) does 84

Walker, 'Empirical Realism',

Judgement and Empirical Intuition not reflect the intrinsic structure of the given but reflects instead the form of judgement, then, it is argued, belief is forever severed from the world it represents. The All-or-Nothing interpretation is designed to challenge this view. Far from disconnecting belief from reality, the judgement-first approach ties belief directly to the objects we interpret our beliefs to be about. This, as suggested in Chapter I, is the basis for Kant's attack on scepticism in the Refutation of Idealism. Rather than trying to strengthen the putative connection between the world and our beliefs by finding a clever way of swearing intermediaries (sensation; intuition, transcendental matter) to truthfulness,85 on my reading, Kant renounces the putative link. He argues that we cannot enjoy determinate inner content independent of the holistic constraints that the signified domain (manifold of appearances) enforces. As Kant suggests: 'For truth and illusion are not in the object, in so far as it is intuited, but in the judgment about it insofar as it is thought' (B3 50). Kant's argument against scepticism is pursued in the following chapter. The feeling of epistemic dislocation that results from a proper appreciation of the judgement-determining role of the Axioms and Anticipations is, I believe, a hangover of the Cartesian-inspired model. We feel a disconnection because we thought that sensations and/or intuitions were supposed to mediate the connection between mind and world. If, as Kant suggests, the structures of empirical intuition reveal the activity of the mind, and not the intrinsic structure of the given, then the content of cognition might be viewed as no longer appropriately connected to the deliverances of the world. Worse still, not only does this misguided interpretative fear dominate the field, but it closes the interpretative circle when it writes itself into the historically dominant English translation of the Critique. Consider, for example, the following dubious interpretation in the Kemp Smith English translation of the Anticipations: In other words, the real in the [field of] appearance has always a magnitude. But since its apprehension by means of mere sensation takes 8S

Davidson's description of the problem.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

137

place in an instant and not through successive synthesis of different sensations, and therefore does not proceed from the parts to the whole, the magnitude is to be met with only in the apprehension. The real has therefore magnitude, but not extensive magnitude. (B2IO, emphasis added)86

In the authoritative Akadamie, the text reads: Das ist: das Reale in det Erscheinung hat jederzeit eine Grage, welche aber nicht in der Apprehension angetroffen wird, indem diese vermittdst det bloBen Emp6ndung in einem Augenblicke und nicht durch successive Synthesis vieler Emp6ndungen geschieht, und also nicht von den Theilen zum Gallzell geht; es hat also zwar cine GroBe, aber keine extensive. (B2IO; emphasis added)87

Kemp Smith, following Wille, alters the meaning and purpose of this important passage. Substituting "nur" for "nicht" changes the last clause to read "the magnitude is to be met with only in the apprehension", when in fact the text actually reads "the magnitude is not to be met with in the apprehension". This negation'is the whole point of the passage. 88 Kant is arguing that, as the magnitude apprehended in the moment is not subject to the part/whole structure that determines intuition as extensive magnitude, intuition must involve another type of magnitude (intensive). This magnitude, like extensive magnitude, reflects the cognitive activity of judgement, not a mirrored relation to the intrinsic structure of the "given" sensation, as Kemp Smith's translation suggests. Kant's point is that there is no independent role for the structure of a bare given (sensation, transcendental matter) that somehow constrains and determines the structure of low-level 86 Nagel, as far as I have discovered, is the first to point out the significance of this interpretative choice in the traditional English translation. My remarks follow on his, with the exception that I interpret the critical upshot as reinforcing a more complete disengagement of the link between the given and belief than Nagel countenances. The English translations offered by Guyer, Meiklejohn, and Pluhar remain true to the original German. 87 I. Kant, Kants Gesammelte Schriften, iii (Berlin: Koniglich Preussische Akadamie der Wissenschaften, 19II), lB. 88 Kemp Smith attempts to defend this interpretation by reinterpreting another passage at B207--8. Apart from referring to Wille's decision to read the relevant passages in this way, Kemp Smith offers no explicit defence of this translation.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition judgement. The apprehension by means of which the synthesis of the manifold of intuition is secured reflects the structure of \ cognition and not a pure received content.~No appeal to the bare structure of something outside judgement is invoked or needed. On Kemp Smith's reading, we are invited to return to the idea that these low-level judgements in some primitive way mirror the (putative) intrinsic structure of sensation itself. This, in turn, reinforces the empiricists' view that the Axioms and Anticipations are where judgement meets an already selfinterpreted given-transcendentally subsuming its structure and reproducing it in the synthesis of intuition in accordance with our forms of representation. Receptivity is once again thrust back to insulated mental content rather than worldinvolving relations. This, as we have seen, lies at the heart of the ultimate realist's attempt to argue backwards from the unity of experience to the unity of noumenal reality. Kemp Smith's dubious interpretative decision is significant. It reinforces, and perhaps may contribute to the dominant empiricist interpretation. His interpretation locates the intensive magnitude in the apprehension of the sensation. The text of the Akadamie version, by contrast, makes it clear that the intensive magnitude is to be met not within the apprehension, but rather in the structure that the activity of apprehension itself imposes. In other words, intensive magnitude is not a mirroring of an already present sensory content. This, as suggested, is the whole point of the passage-emphasizing once again the priority Kant assigns to judgement as the basis for the possibility of empirical intuition. Drawing attention to this passage further reinforces how deeply entrenched the empiricist interpretation of empirical realism is. It also reveals how difficult it is to divorce this foreign interpretative agenda from the Kantian alternative. In this case, Kant's actual position is distorted to the degree of a full, unacknowledged, negation. I have suggested that interpreting the Axioms and Anticipations in the new context will leave the empiricist feeling that we have, in effect, estranged ourselves from reality. Epistemology that renounces the given will seem to float unnervingly free of the world. Against this view I have suggested

Judgement and Empirical Intuition

I39

that the All-or-Nothing approach effectively remedies epistemic vertigo. The need for an informative or evidential connection between belief and uninterpreted reality presupposes the Cartesian epistemic model in which empirical content is given independent of considerations of truth and reference. If we instead adopt the All-or-Nothing interpretation, relating determinate content to the presence of objective world-involving constraints, the possibility of radical epistemic dislocation is denied. Vertigo fades as we tie belief directly to the ground floor of reality: to the objects and events our beliefs are about. Epistemic vertigo is a product of the empiricist epistemic template. We feel it when we depart from the received view that the given must mediate between belief and the world. We cure it by renouncing the framework itself.

2.3. SUMMARY We are now in a position to appreciate how far removed the Allor-Nothing interpretation of Kant's treatment of the manifold of intuition is from the idea that the constitutive principles serve as an information-conveying relay between a sensory 'given'and our object-oriented beliefs. We have determined that rudimentary structure, at the level of empirical content and temporal order, stands at the core of the constitutive principles. These principles offer necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the possibility of determinate objective representation. The priority assigned to the role of judgement dominates the focus of analysis. Intuitions are the product of low-level, partially determinative principJes. At one end, the cognitive contribution necessary for the representation of the manifold of intuition serves to separate Kant's analysis of cognition from the belief-mongering of the Davidsonians. Kant rejects the fourth dogma of empiricism: that we must choose between either the holistic character of belief or a cognitively barren receptivity to the world. The synthesis necessary for the emergence of empirical intuition requires the activity of judgement. At the other end, we also know that Kant is not reinventing empiricist epistemology. There is nothing outside judgement

Judgement and Empirical Intuition (transcendental matter, sensory simples) that informs, constrains, or ultimately grounds objectively valid judgement. We should resist the idea that transcendental matter (somehow) provides the epistemic friction that connects our beliefs with the world. When Kant describes sensation as the matter of intuition, he does so in the context of object-involving judgement. The capacity (receptivity) to acquire representations through the way in which we are affected by objects is called sensibility. (B33) The effect of an object on the capacity for representation, insofar as we are affected by it, is sensation. That intuition which is related to the object through sensation is called empirical . . . I call that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation its matter. .. (B34) The receptivity of our mind to receive representations insofar as it is affected in some way [I call] sensibility ... It comes alongwith our nature that intuition can never be other than sensible; i.e., that it contains only the way in which we are affected by objects. (B7S)

It is in the context of object-involving representation that the sensory mode of presentation becomes significant. No doubt the deliverances of experience contribute "that [the matter] in the appearance" that makes our knowledge of the object possible. But this role takes place in the field of experience: in the world of represented objects and events. The receptivity that Kant envisions is the empirically real one in which our sensory organs come into contact with the empirical objects. The very fact that we are affected at all should remind the reader that Kant is looking to the objective temporal-spatial world to fix mental content. But, of course, the notion of affection requires the higher-order regulative principles to be in play: the objective temporal and content specific features necessary for the representation of causally determining appearances. On their own, the constitutive principles yield a necessary, but intrinsically underdetermined manifold. Vertigo, as we have seen, is symptomatic of a false picture of the relation of mind and world. Renouncing the pre-critical epistemic framework liberates empirical realism from the charge that the lowest levels of cognition (Axioms and Anticipations) float free of the world.

Judgement and Empirical Intuition By viewing empirical intuition as the product of pre-objective judgement rather than as a primitive (non-conceptual) point of contact between reality and belief, empirical realism effectively fractures the disjunction between the belief-mongering of the Davidsonian programme and the sensations-up epistemology of the pervasive empiricist approach. Far from having a tenuous 'connection to the general themes of the Analytic' ,89 the Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception offer a clear statement of Kant's new judgement-oriented approach, reinforcing the Copernican shift away from the empiricist notion of the given. The unfortunate neglect of this half of the Analytic is, in my view, symptomatic of the powerful grip the 'common prejudice' continues to enforce. ,89

Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, 31:.

3 (

"/ Judgement and the Manifold of Appearance The essence of perceiving is discrimiJpting. (J. J. Gibson)

3.0. INTRODUCTION

The regulative principles of the understanding, like the constitutive principles of the last chapter, concern the determination of temporal structure and the conditions for the specification of empirical content. Unlike the constitutive principles, which deal with judgements relating to the manifold of intuition, the regulative principles (the Analogies 1 ) concern the manifold of appearance. The regulative role of the Analogies is directed towards establishing the formal structures necessary for the representation of objects and events. The Analogies, as testified by the sheer volume of secondary literature produced since the original publication of the Critique, constitute the heart and soul of Kant's account of representation. Kant's arguments in this portion of the Analytic seem to defy interpretative fatigue. I do not pretend in this chapter to offer a detailed analysis of each analogy and assess competing secondary interpretations. My analysis is restricted to the 1 Although the following examination of the regulative principles focuses primarily on the Analogies, it should be recalled that the Postulates of Empirical Thought are also regulative principles. These latter principles deal with the modal categories of possibility, actuality, and necessity. As mentioned in Chapter 2, these concepts do not 'augment the concept to which they are ascribed in the least' (B266). It is for this reason, and for reasons of economy, that I will discuss the Postulates only in the context of the Refutation of Idealism.

Judgement and Appearances

143

modest aim of offering a description of the central problems Kant is addressing and developing Kant's response in the context of the realist requirement of unity-in-the-empirical-object. The Priority-of-Judgement approach leads to stressing the positive requirement of an objective, causally integrated empirical domain as a necessary condition for the possibility of determinate inner content. This chapter is divided into two broad sections. The guiding theme in Section 3.1 concerns the central role Kant assigns to the Analogies as the basis for the discrimination of objects and events. The reason for couching the following analysis in terms of the discriminatory role of the pure concepts of the understanding is to highlight the continued advantage of interpreting Kant's analysis in the context of the indeterminate/determinate framework. This, as was demonstrated in the preceding chapter, is an instructive way of viewing the general nature of the epistemic problems Kant is elucidating. The priority of objective considerations, contra the subjectiveto-objective framework standardly deployed by empiricistminded interpreters, is developed in detail in this chapter. The aim is to reveal the primacy and necessity of objective structures (primarily temporal) as the basis for the original representation of objects and events; to show how we, in Kant's words, 'derive the subjective sequence of apprehension from the objective sequence of appearance .. .' (B238). By characterizing the central concern of the Analogies in terms of the conditions necessary for the original discrimination of the manifold of appearance, I hope to unmask and marginalize some of the aHtoo-common empiricist misinterpretations of Kant's analysis. 2 Unlike many interpretaters of the Analogies, I resist the view that we should approach the Analogies as three self-contained arguments. This approach seems wrong to me on all counts. We find, for example, much relating to the permanence of substance near the end of the Second Analogy. The (much neglected) Third Analogy requires arguments from the Second if we are to make 2 Having challenged the dominant, empiricist framework in the preceding chapter as it relates to empirical it~tuition, I now turn to the task of developing a reading of the Analogies that is in step with this rejection of the empiricist, epistemie template.

ii

I44

Judgement and Appearances

sense of the problem (not to mention the response to the problem) Kant is addressing. The Second and Third analogies require the permanence of substance if their accounts of alteration are to be developed at all. The a priori synthetiC\principles necessary to represent events, empirical objects, ancLpbjective temporal structure are interdependent. I treat them as such. I merely add the caveat that, since I read Kant as placing more emphasis on event discrimination, with the permanence of substance developed under this pressure, I introduce the Second and Third Analogies first-coming back to the First Analogy as a necessary condition for the possibility of representing events. Section 3.2 introduces the Refutation of Idealism. The Refutation is an important and succinct statement of the realist consequences of the Analytic. My analysis will focus on how the anti-empirical idealist arguments operate in confirming realism at the empirical level. Kant's account of error, and his dismissal of scepticism (the scandal of philosophy), are addressed as welL Both of these issues are difficult areas for my Priority-ofJudgement interpretation. I offer a frank assessment of how the unmediated account of representation can deal with referential failure in both its local (error) and global (scepticism) forms. Overall, the discussion of the Refutation serves to stress how the shift in epistemic paradigms Kant announces in the Analytic affirms the realist designation and how this realism confronts the standard empiricist worries. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the progress made thus far towards establishing the five principles of empirical realism introduced in Chapter 1.

3.1. THE INTERPRETATIVE STRATEGY We know objects by what they do. The Analogies are designed to provide an account of the conceptual apparatus necessary for the possibility of cognizing objects and events. This task is dominated chiefly by the need to secure the rudimentary temporal structure necessary for the representation of the manifold of appearance. The pure concepts of substance, cause and effect, and reciprocal causal determination thus 'have as their goal

1

1

I

Judgement and Appearances

145

nothing but the,conditions of the unity of empirical cognition in the synthesis of the appearances .. .' (B223-4). Without these pure concepts, Kant asserts that no necessary connection of perceptions (in time) is possible. And therefore no experience is possible. Kant also describes the Analogies as making possible 'the formal conditions of empirical truth ... ' (B236): 'these rules of the understanding are not only true a priori but are rather even the source of all truth, i.e., of the agreement of our cognition with objects, in virtue of containing the ground of the possibility of experience ... ' (B296). By supplying the basic structures that make the manifold of appearance possible, the Analogies simultaneously secure the possibility of a truth-structure for the representation of objects. The conditions for the possibility of experienc:e and the requirement of a general truth-structure for representation coalesce in the Analogies. The abiding theme of the following analysis concerns the conditions necessary for representing an objective domain given the underdetermination (lack of reference and truth-conditions) of the manifold of intuition. The following passage expresses the fundamental problem around which our analysis will be developed. Kant asks: 'what do I understand by the question, how the manifold may be combined in the appearance itself (which is yet nothing in itself)' (B235-6)? This question, understandably, pertains both to the possibility of experience, and to the requirements of reference and truth. The Analogies are Kant's response to this central problem. The discussion in this first section is structured as follows: (r) problem: underdetermination of apprehension; (2) solution: transcendental requirements for object-involving judgement (in two parts); (A) objective irreversibility (Second Analogy) and objective reversibility (Third Analogy) in the order of apprehension; (B) connection between rule-governedness and causal lawfulness; (3) discussion of unity-in-the-object (First Analogy) as the general representation of the independent causal nexus; (4) a response to a contemporary objection.

Judgement and Appearances 3.I.I.

The Analogies: The Problem of Underdetermination

The Analogies are a group of mutually sdpporting arguments designed to address the problem of the underdetermination of temporal structure and empirical content in apprehension. To appreciate Kant's response we first need to examine in some detail why Kant believes that the representation of objects and events demands a priori conceptual considerations: why Kant believes that 'through the mere perception the objective relation of the appearances that are succeeqing one another remains undetermined' (B233). Establishing the correct level of Kant's concerns in this respect constitutes more than half the battle for correctly interpreting the significance of Kant's approach. We should begin therefore with the general question: "To what extent is apprehension underdetermined?"3 There are broadly two ways of interpreting the problem-a weak and a strong reading. The first interpretation is empiricist in nature. Let us call it the "weak underdetermination thesis". It casts the issue in terms of the conditions necessary for the ordering of events in experience. Viewing the problem of underdetermination from an empiricist perspective, the central issues will seem to revolve around the conceptual apparatus necessary to move from determinate subjective perceptions to reasonable objective orderings. Arguments concerning sufficient regularity, reasonable stability of substance, and some objective form of dating given particulars are the standard interpretations of Kant's programme on this reading. Apart from odd cases where the time lag between the beginning of an event and its conclusion alter for an observer, we do quite well, it is urged, in deploying the concept of an event on the basis of the serial temporal structure apprehension itself provides. 4 We determine the beginning and ending of an event by the (alleged) intrinsic time order of our perceptions. The beginning comes first in the order of apprehensions, the conclusion after. 3 A well-developed reeent statement of the underdetermination thesis can be found in Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge, eh. II. The difficulty with Longtlcnesse's reading is that it fails, at times, to push past an (empiricist) commitment to determinate subjective representation. 4 See Walker, Kant, III, II2 for examples based on regularities.

Judgement and Appearances

147

Kant's arguments are interpreted, in this context, in terms of the conditions necessary for fixing this order in experience. As Wilkerson suggests, the problem is that 'we must find in our experience. the dues that tell us we are perceiving successive objective events'. 5 Empiricist-minded interpreters consequently concentrate on the kinds of conditions within experience that sustain the cognitive processes necessary for ordering our perceptions. They correctly report that we can indeed make do with less than full causal determinism and the inalterability of substance. 6 This view is not without textual support. There are passages in the Analogies that seem to authorize this reading. Kant states that 'the apprehension of the manifold of appearance is always successive. The representations of the parts succeed one another. Whether they also succeed one another in the object is a second point for reflection, which is not contained in the first' (B2 34). It seems as if we begin with object-involving subjective representations in determinate subjective succession and then wrestle with the problem of how to connect these in the most rationally compelling way. Underdetennination on this interpretation thus centres on what has to be added-what clues we can pick out-to subjective succession to make objective temporal structure and content possible. The difficulty with this general approach is that it conflicts substantially with many of Kant's commitments in the Analogies. For example, Kant quite dearly states in the Second Analogy that the subjective order of apprehension is derived from the objective order of phenomenon (B238). The thrust of the two preceding chapters has been devoted to liberating empirical realism from the grip of this empiricist-oriented view by rejecting the "L-experience/K-experience" model, and the Cartesian epistemic framework that makes these interpretations plausible. In the context of the Priority-of-Judgement paradigm, empirical realism has been viewed as constituting a radical Wilkerson, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 77. See Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, 140-52, and Wilkerson, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 84-90. More recently, Guyer seems to be attracted to the claim that the argument concerns how we verify event discriminations (see Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, ch. 10). 5

6

Judgement and Appearances break with the received view. Temporal structure and empirical content are not present in apprehension independent of the contemporaneous presence of objective considerations. Therefore, when Kant states that it is with reference to a rule that I 'make my subjective synthesis (of aplllehension) objective .. .' (B24o), I interpret him not to mean, as Wilkerson believes, that we have determinate L-type experience that is added to and made objectively valid. Instead, as Kant suggests in the remainder of the above sentence, 'only under this presupposition [the objective and independent temporal structure of the manifold of appearance] alone is the experience of something that happens even possible' (B24o; emphasis added). In other words, without reference to an objective domain and the epistemic conditions that make an objective domain possible, it makes no sense to attribute subjective content and temporal structure to the product of apprehension. As Kant suggests in the Second Analogy, without reference to an object, no state of affairs can be represented at all: we would have only a play of representations that would not be related to any object at all, i.e., by means of our perception no appearance would be distinguished from any other ... [mere apprehension] determines no object, and thus cannot count as the cognition of any object (not even in the appearance). (B239-40)

If the arguments in Chapter 2 against the empiricist view are compelling, then the implicit assumption of a determinate inner series of experiences in apprehension itself should be viewed as mistaken. There are no "clues" in subjective experience because there is no such thing as "subjective" experience. This brings into focus the question of the cogency of the view that Kant is arguing from inner temporal orderings to outer temporal structure. Kant, I suggest, rejects the empiricist view that we can 'just think of ourselves as directly aware of events'? The problem of underdetermination is more disabling than the empiricist view acknowledges. Kant is interested in the question of what is necessary for the original discrimination of events and objects, not with the question of what is needed to construct the most rationally compelling interpretation of events. 7

Walker, Kant,

102.

Judgement and Appearances

I49

The second interpretation (the "strong underdetermination thesis") takes up this radical underdetermination theme and pushes it further. The force of this reading can be gauged by first noting two seemingly innocuous remarks Kant makes about time. Kant asserts that objective temporal structure is not itself an object of perception. In each of the Analogies, within the first two paragraphs, Kant emphasizes this feature of experience (BU5, B233, B257). We do not observe the flow of objective time directly. While the event concept is experiential, it is not a purely empirical concern. It is not given directly in the content of experience. It is rather the case that the representation of a particular time is furnished by means of the objective relations that determine events. As Kant suggests: 'This determination of position [jn the time order] cannot be borrowed from the relation of the appearances to absolute time (for that is not an object of perception), but, conversely, the appearances themselves must determine their positions in time for each other . . .' (B245). Empirical temporal determination is relational. The salient point is that the temporal structure of perception is not determined by any content in the perceptions themselves. There is no Greenwich Mean Time of inner sense that leaves its signature on our perceptions. The second, apparently trivial, feature concerns the minimal requirement for the representation of an event. This entails the representation of two successive temporal locations connecting opposing states of one object (or set of objects). As Kant suggests, the representation of an event requires 'that appearances succeed one another, i.e., that a state of things exists at one time the opposite of which existed in the previous state' (B233). Kant's description of an event in terms of opposing states connected in time is designed to highlight the fact that when we cognize an event, real or imagined, we posit the being and not being (or not being and being) of an object through successive states. This is not to suggest that alteration involves annihilation or spontaneous creation. On the contrary, Kant has powerful arguments against the possibility of such miraculous events. Kant's point is simply that the notion of an event involves the notion of an alteration, 'one and the same subject as existing with two

Judgement and Appearances opposed determinations .. .' (B233) in time. This connection between two states involves the active contribution of the mind. It is 'the product of a synthetic faculty of the imagination, which temporal relations' determines inner sense with regard (B233). The event concept thus presuppo'ses an act of cognition. This connection is 'not the work of mere sense and intuition .. .'

to

(B2 33)·

From these two seemingly mundane observations-that time is not an object of perception and that the event concept involves the synthesis of two opposing states connected in time-a great deal follows that is relevant to the strong underdetermination thesis. As we have seen, the Kantian approach aims to shatter the framework in which we model the problem of objective representation in terms of what needs to be added to an already experience-sufficient order in apprehension. Kant intends to challenge the basic idea that the discrimination of events operates from a self-given subjective order. To the question, "How are we able to cognize alterations?", the Kantian analysis I favour begins with an acceptance of the truly radical underdetermination (both temporal and empirical content) of apprehension. As Kant states, one can combine the two states [perceptions] in question in two different ways, so that one or the other precedes in time ... I am therefore only conscious that my imagination places one state before, and the other after; not that the one state precedes the other in the object; or, in other words, through the mere perception the objective relation of the appearances that are succeeding one another remains undetermined. (BL33-4)

It is important to emphasize that Kant's claim that the objective succession of perception "remains undetermined by means of mere perception" is not intended, as empiricist-minded interpreters believe, to invite a response in terms of the most reasonable or likely order of perceptions. Kant's point is rather that the synthetic unity of apperception, if we look exclusively to imagination, is profoundly underdetermined. It yields, on its own, no discrimination of events at all. I interpret this as a reductio of the empiricist formulation: hence Kant's claims that temporal position is not given in the content of experience and his claim that

Judgement and Appearances the cognitive architecture of an event requires more than what apprehension can on its own deliver. The Kantian analysis rejects the view that cognition operates on the basis of a determinately given subjective foundation. The subject-centred act of synthesis, in other words, requires an order that is not determined in imagination, but demands reference to the objective temporal order in the object/event represented. Ultimately this requires an objective temporal structure that is independent of inner determinations. 8 The Analogies, interpreted in the context of the strong underdetermination thesis, are thus intended to secure the basic structure that makes an objective manifold of things represented possible. It is for this reason that considerations of reference and truth are introduced alongside the a priori concepts. As Kant suggests:- 'Thus, the relation of appearances ... is the condition of the objective validity of our empirical judgments with regard to the series of perceptions, thus of their empirical truth, and therefore of experience' (B247). In summary, the strong underdetermination thesis asserts that the order demanded of perception for the possibility of experience is not determined in apprehension itself. Imagination underdetermines the order of perceptions necessary for the original representation of objects and events. It is not, therefore, a sufficient basis for determinate representation. Although we have not yet discussed how Kant develops the case for the role of the pure concepts, what we have established is that the requirement of these concepts goes straight to the possibility of representation itself. The temporal succession attributed to the order of apprehension is not the product of apprehension. Apprehension does not, contrary to the weak interpretation, provide the basis for "finding clues" for objective temporal order. An advocate of the weak interpretation may respond by arguing that the strong interpretation neglects the "fact" that apprehension does offer a determinate temporal order. Is it not the case that the Axioms of Intuition secure the objective, serial order of apprehension? This seemed to be the whole focus of the 8 The following section on the Refutation of Idealism will examine in detail why this independence requirement embodies realism at the empirical level.

Judgement and Appearances transcendental time determination supplied by the Axioms of Intuition (time series). In the second chapter I showed that the ~erial order of apprehension and the objective successive order 6fperception are not identical. Time series and time order are two different transcendental determinations. I will say more about time order below. For the moment it is necessary to point out that the strong interpretation acknowledges that, while Kant uses the notion of the subjective order of apprehension at times as if it constitutes a determinate temporal order, this locution should be understood within the larger context in which KaRt declares-most firmly in the Second Analogy-that our ability to represent the subjective serial order of apprehension is derived from the objective sequence of appearances (B238). This returns us to Kant's earlier point that objective temporal order is not an object in experience, but is determined with reference to the temporal relations of objects and events represented. Since the manifold of our representations, in the synthesis of phenomena, is always successive, in it no object is represented because 'through this sequence, which is common to all apprehensions, nothing is distinguished from anything else' (B243)' Without an independent and objective temporal order, there could not be representation of events or objects, and therefore no determinate inner representation of the order of apprehension. The strong interpretation thus reluctantly employs the somewhat misleading description Kant offers of the "order" of the subjective serial character of apprehension, with the caveat that this way of describing the problem already involves the deployment of the concept of objective succession as a condition for making intelligible the pre-objective, serial order of apprehension itself. This does not amount to a denial of an attributable order to subjective apprehension. What is denied is that the determinate successive order of perceptions of inner sense is the expression of the purely serial order of apprehension. Remaining strict in upholding the non-objective character of apprehension itself provides the basis for recognizing that, instead of finding a temporal order represented in the structure of apprehension, we instead have merely differing mental episodes: "having a representation, ;':', then "having a represen-

Judgement and Appearances

153

tation, B". A1th~ugh the Priority-of-Judgement interpretation is at odds with many aspects of Guyer's interpretation of the Second Analogy, on this point Guyer's analysis is instructive. He suggests that: the ultimate premise of Kant's argument is ... nothing other than the alleged key to the transcendental deduction, the premise that 'every intuition contains a manifold in itself, which, however, would not be represented as such if the mind did not distinguish the time in the succession of impressions one after another: for as contained in one moment no representation can be anything other than absolute unity'. (A99) ... this means that we are never at one moment in an epistemically qualified position to judge that a sequence of representation at earlier moments has occurred ... rather, we must interpret the content of what is always just our present representational state as representing such a sequence of earlier representations culminating in our present state. 9

The important lesson to be drawn from Guyer's remarks is that our ability to represent a determinate subjective order in apprehension demands more than what the content of any immediate state of apprehension can deliver. It is only by means of the representation of an objective order, and thus to the conditions of this representing state, that we are able to attribute a determinate successive order to apprehension. Judgements about the order of our internal states are empirical judgements like all others: they involve objective events. Although Allison advocates a position somewhere between the weak and the strong interpretations, he does suggest that 'if we are to understand the problem that concerns Kant in the Analogies we must first reject the assumption that the subjective order is a datum or bit of evidence from which we must somehow make inferences about an objective order.' Allison concludes by noting that, 'what Kant is trying to say here is that if all we had were this indeterminate subjective order, we would not be able to represent any temporal order at all (objective or subjective)'.l0 I would add only that this means we would not be able to represent mental content at all. 9 10

Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 2.54.

Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, :2.18.

I54

Judgement and Appearances

The Priority-of-Judgement approach thus endorses the strong underdetermination thesis. The representatjon of the successive structure of apprehension involves object-involving considerations as a precondition. The question we now face concerns how judgement overcomes the indeterminacy left by the apprehension of intuition and creates the formal, objective structure necessary for the manifold of appearance. 3.1.2. The Kantian Response to the Problem of Radical Uunderdetermination .

I

Accepting that the epistemic urgency of the underdetermination problem is captured best by the strong thesis allows us to reformulate the problem Kant is posing in the Analogies. The question now focuses on the basic problem concerning the conceptual preconditions necessary for the discrimination of the objective structure of the manifold of appearance. Kant develops his position in two coordinated directions. On the one hand, he is concerned with the a priori concepts' role in establishing the initial conditions (substance, causality, temporal structure) that make the representation of appearances (events and empirical objects) possible. The Analogies offer the reader an integrated treatment of these conditions, detailing why there is a transcendental requirement concerning the permanence of substance, and the rule-governed (causal) character of successive and simultaneous existing events and objects. Related to these objectoriented conditions is Kant's discussion of the flow of the subjects' perceptions. Here the weight of the analysis falls on the need for objective irreversibility (in other cases objective reversibility) of our perceptual states. Consequently we have Kant's famous discussion of the perceptual constraints that operate in the house and ship example in the Second Analogy. Much of the secondary literature on the Analogies constructs Kant's argument in terms that prioritiz.e issues related to the flow of the subjects' perceptions. l l These reconstructions oper11 Strawson's well-known "non sequitur" charge is rooted in a careful "flow-of-perception" argument. See Allison, Kant's Trancendental Idealism, 232-4, for a powerful response to Strawson's interpretation.

j

Judgement and Appearances

155

ate in a quasi-empiricist manner: the prioritization of the subject's states with object-oriented considerations following in the wake of the success or failure of the former. I do not doubt that we should pay close attention to the "flowof-perception" aspects of Kant's argument. They are crucial. But before launching into that discussion it is worth reminding ourselves that the Priority-of-Judgement approach explicitly repudiates the empiricist commitment to determinate subjective mental states. Our interest in the determinate flow of perceptions is therefore not an investigation into a pure subjective realm. On the contrary, the investigation into the kind of constraints that the experiential content of perception (events and objects) enforces is an objective matter: it concerns an appearance like all others. Our ability to make judgements about the real order of our perception is a judgement about an object (ourselves in this case) that is causally influenced by other objects. Kant's injunction that we know ourselves only as appearances cuts two ways: it limits the basis of knowledge of the self to the empirical domain, and it should remind us that judgements about the self (including its internal states) are arrived at in the same object-involving manner as all other judgements about appearances. There is nothing epistemologically privileged or transparently given about judgements that concern the flow of inner perceptions. With this in mind, the next two sections explore how objective irreversibility and reversibility of perceptual states figures in Kant's analysis. The Second and Third Analogies, respectively, develop these themes. The argument then moves to how these constraints are experientially expressed by means of the rulegoverned character of events and objects. This will then be extended into the real (as opposed to logical) expression of rulegovernedness that is causal determination (successive and simultaneous). We will then move back to the First Analogy for Kant's arguments concerning the transcendental requirement of the permanence of substance as the necessary ground for real (causal) relations among empirical objects.

'I :1

Judgement and Appearances 3. I. 3. Objective Irreversibility of Perceptions

'~

The first step in the Kantian response to the radical underdetermination of perception involves a discussion of the requirement of the irreversibility of the order of perceptions. An examination of Kant's famous (infamous) house and ship example serves as a useful introduction. Given the extensive amount of secondary interpretation concerning this example, it is important first to review, in detail, what Kant actually says: [IJ I still have to show what sort of combiilation in time pertains to the manifold in the appearances itself even tbough the representation of it in apprehension is always successive. [2J Thus, e.g., the apprehension of the manifold in the appearance of a house that stands before me is successive. b] Now the question is whether the manifold of this house itself is also successive, which certainly no one will concede.... [4] That something happens, I.e., that something or a state comes to be that previously was not, cannot be empirically perceived except where an appearance precedes that does not contain this state in itself ... [5] Every apprehension of an occurrence is therefore a perception which follows another one. [6] Since this is the case in all synthesis of apprehension, however, as I have shown above in the case of the appearance of the house, my apprehension of an occurrence is not yet thereby distinguished from any other. [7] Yet I also note that, if in the case of an appearance which contains a happening I call the preceding state perception A and the following one B, then B can only follow A in apprehension, but the perception A cannot follow but only precede B. [8] E.g., I see a ship driven downstream. [9] My perception of its position downstream follows the perception of its position upstream, and it is impossible that in the apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be perceived downstream and afterwards upstream. [IO] The order in the sequence of perceptions in apprehension is therefore determined, and the apprehension is bound to it. (B23S-7)

First, a brief review of the argument. The first two sentences introduce the epistemic task. The problem Kant identifies is the radical underdetermination of the temporal structure of the manifold of appearance. The first reference to the house, as an appearance, is designed to remind us of this. No one, Kant rightly asserts [3], would argue that a house is itself successive in character-the roof temporally

Judgement and Appearances

IS7

before the foundations, and so on. The discriminatory task hinges on how we establish the objective temporal framework in which we determine and distinguish the mere successive character of our acts of apprehension from 'how the manifold may be combined in the appearance itself .. .' (B236). This, as suggested earlier, is the problem around which all the Analogies are developed. In the next sentence [4], Kant announces his analysis of the minimal conceptual requirement necessary for the deployment of the event concept. This contains the claim that the discrimination of an event presupposes a temporal connection such that the judgement that something has occurred demands positing two opposing states of affairs connected in time. The opposition between the states is simply the bare requirement that state A does not include state B, or vise versa, as a subset. The next sentence [5] seals the minimal description. Kant claims no more, at this stage, than that the discrimination of an event requires 'a perception which follows another one'. While the condition of successiveness in apprehension is necessary for the empirical deployment of the concept, Kant makes it clear in thefollowing sentence [6]-this is the crucial move-~ that the notion of one perception following on another is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the original representation. The mere successive nature of apprehension fails to provide a sufficient basis for event discrimination. In Kant's words, 'my apprehension of an occurrence is not yet thereby distinguished from any other'. What we have is the serial temporal relation of the Axioms. What we need is objective time order. Something other than mere successiveness of apprehension is required. The discrimination of an event demands the objective irreversibility of the order in time connecting the two perceptions. Accordingly Kant states in the following sentence [7] that the cognitive architecture necessary for representing an event entails that 'the perception A cannot follow but only precede B'. Kant is not claiming that we al:e somehow barred from conceptualizing the ship going upstream. 12 The irreversibility of the order, as Kant clarifies in the following two sentences [8, 9], 12 The empiricist interpretation often errs in this way. See Bennett, Kant's Analytic, 2.2I; Wilkerson, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 80.

Judgement and Appearances relates to the identity of the event described: 'My perception of its position downstream follows the percept~on of its position upstream, and it is impossible that in the apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be perceived downstream and afterwards upstream' (emphasis added). Altering the direction of the order means describing a different event. The last sentence [10] completes Kant's argument. The discrimination necessary for the deployment of the event concept requires necessary order in the temporal conneetion of the object represented. In Kant's words, 'this rule is always to be found in the perception of that which happens [an event], and it makes the order of the perceptions that follow one another (in the apprehension of this appearance) necessary' (B238). The irreversibility of the order of the perceptions is thus tied directly to the identity requirement of an objective event. Determinate temporal order and empirical content concern the relations of the manifold of appearance, not the "private" process of synthesis. Bird's analysis adds further weight to this interpretation: The necessity in such a case is the logical necessity that to apprehend a ship's sailing downstream is, necessarily, to apprehend an event in which the ship's position downstream follows its position upstream. The order of this event is a necessary order, not because it is impossible for ships to sail upstream, but because if the constituent states had been reversed the event apprehended would have been a different event.1J

Although Kant is claiming that the objective irreversibility of the order of perceptions is a necessary condition for the discrimination of events, Kant's argument makes no claims about what kind of events we may cognize. It does not rule out those odd perceptual cases where our perception of the effect occurs before our perception of the cause. 14 On the contrary, it allows us to make sense of these odd perceptual encounters on the basis that our perceptual states arise through the causal interplay between the world and our senses. Kant's claim is more modest. It concerns the transcendental requirement necessary for event discrimination. How we reinterpret our objective perceptions in Bird, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, 155. See Wilkerson, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 80, for examples with mirrors, mice, and Englishmen at erieket. l3

14

Judgement and Appearances

I59

terms of the v
3.I.4. Objective Reversibility of Perceptions Like the Second Analogy, the Third Analogy is part of Kant's response to the problem posed by the underdetermination of temporal structure and empirical content by the (mere) successive character of apprehension. In the Second Analogy Kant asserts the need for grounding the requirement that our perceptions be bound down in an objective sequential order. The logical template for cognizing an event entails an objective sequential order of perceptions. In the Third Analogy, Kant introduces the need for a (real) ground (causal community) for cognizing events as occurring simultaneously. What concerns us in this section is the first step in the argument: Kant's assertion that, in representing events and objects as simultaneous, we are required to view the order of their perception as objectively reversible. As with the Second Analogy, Kant begins by reminding the reader that temporal order cannot be derived from the successive character of apprehension: [I] Things are simultaneous if in empirical intuition the perception of one can follow the perception of the other reciprocally . .. [2] Now simultaneity is the existence of the manifold at the same time. [3] But one cannot perceive time itself and thereby derive from the fact that things are positioned at the same time that their perceptions can follow each other reciprocally. [4] The synthesis of the imagination in apprehension would therefore only present each of these perceptions as one that is present in the subject when the other is not, and conversely, but not that the objects are simultaneous ... [5] Consequently, a concept of the understanding of the reciprocal sequence of the determinations of these things simultaneously existing externally to each other is required in order to say that the reciprocal sequence of perceptions is grounded in the object, and thereby to represent the simultaneity as objective. (B257)

It is easier to sec why the mere successive character of apprehension is an insufficient basis for the discrimination of simultaneous events than it was to see why we need objective

r60

Judgement and Appearances

temporal order in the Second Analogy. In the latter case, the serial character of apprehension shared a superficial similarity in temporal structure to the objective notion of t~me order. Kant thus needed to show why the order of apprehension failed to provide the basis for determinate sequential orderings of events in the objects represented through apprehension: why a (mere) succession of perceptions was not a perception of succession. In the case of simultaneity, the (successive) order of apprehension is clearly an unsuitable basis for representing events and objects as existing in one time (simultaneity). Kant develops the first step in this argument as follows. In sentence [r] he notes that, when representing a state of affairs as simultaneous, we are implicitly asserting that the order of perceptions is reversible. If I assert that the moon exists simultaneously with the earth, T am claiming that no significance attaches to the order of my perception of the moon (perception A) and the horizon (perception B). I could have seen the moon first and then the horizon, or I may have been looking at a building on the horizon and then looked up at the moon. Kant's point is twofold. He is reminding the reader that the order of apprehension has no bearing on the content represented, and he is anticipating the claim that order indifference will require a (real) ground in the represented (the empirical domain) if it is to fulfil the objective temporal and content role required to make sense of genuine order indifference. The second sentence asserts that simultaneity refers to the states of the manifold of appearance in one moment of time. A judgement that states of affairs are simultaneous is thus a judgement about things represented--events and objects-at some objective temporal position. The third sentence, like its cousin in the Second Analogy, reintroduces Kant's general claim that temporal position cannot be drawn from the order of mere apprehension. Our perceptions have no temporal stamp on them. They are present or not present. Order (temporal and causal) is a relational feature determined by an act of judgement. We cannot therefore ground the reversibility of perceptions on the basis of looking for an inherent temporal content written on the face of our successively occurring perceptions.

Judgement and Appearances

161

In the followipg sentence [4] Kant emphasizes this problem by asserting that (per impossible) perceptions without objective order would indicate no more than presence or absence of perceptual content. Kant's claim is counterfactual. He is not asserting that we have determinate perceptual content independent of objective temporal structure. He is rather pointing to the poverty that would obtain if we mistakenly thought {as Hume did} that we could somehow derive simultaneity from the mere presence or absence of perceptual content. Presence and absence, is a profoundly underdetermined basis for sustaining any sort of object-oriented judgement. TIle fifth sentence draws out the lesson. We need some mode of judging how it can be the case that we are able to represent simultaneity in the manifold of appearances given the underdetermination of the manifold of appearance by the serial character of mere apprehension. There must be some a priori rule that details fea~ures in the manifold of the represented {empirical events and objects}. This rule, as we shall see below, is the idea of mutual determination in each moment of time. For immediate purposes there are two important claims in the last sentence worth emphasizing. The first is Kant's reference to the spatial character of the manifold of appearance: 'things simultaneously existing externally to each other.' Although objective temporal structure is the driving concern of the Third Analogy (as with all of the schematized categories), it is important to remember that simultaneity requires that other form of intuition-space-as a necessary condition for its possibility. We are able to represent events and objects as simultaneous because we can invoke the lateral relation of space: many things existing and interacting in each moment of the flow of objective time. Without space there would be merely one dimension of objective representation-objective temporal order-and, in that case, reciprocal presence and absence in apprehension would not be possible since simultaneity in the field of the represented would be impossible to represent. It is thus on the basis of the spatial character of human cognition that the representation of simultaneity is possible and an explanation of this mode of objective representation is therefore necessary.

162

Judgement and Appearances

The second feature that Kant emphasizes in the last sentence reaffirms the object-oriented role of the Third Analogy. The irreversibility of perceptions 'is grounded iQjhe object, and thereby ... [represents] simultaneity as objective'. This claim is in keeping with the Priority-of-Judgement approach. It would be a mistake, I believe, to think of the argument concerning reversibility as an "objectifying" condition. That approach smacks of the empiricist view that we enjoy determinate subjective perceptual content and then add to the mix the a priori concept of mutual determination. As with the Second Analogy, I think we can make better sense of the task Kant is addressing if we begin with Kant's own claims that the subjective pole of representation is an insufficient ground for the kind of inferences to objects that empiricist-minded readers are prone to bring to their interpretation of the Analogies. Simultaneity is not something we add to perceptual content in order to create the most reasonable temporal assignments for our "subjective" perceptions.15 On the contrary, as I read the Third Analogy, simultaneity is an objective temporal template deployed from the beginning as a condition for determinate perceptual content.

"

3.I.5· The Rule-Governedness of Perceptions The next step in Kant's argument requires that we trace how he connects the constraints of irreversibility and reversibility of perceptions to the notion of a rule. We need to inquire into what motivates this move. Is there perhaps a gap in Kant's argument-a shift from (putative) subjective constraints relating to 15 The Third Analogy has received very little attention until relatively recently. R. Wolff's comments are representative: 'Unhappily, Kant lets down after the exertion of analyzing objective succession and gives us a hasty account of co-existence which adds little or nothing to the remarks in the Second Analogy' (Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I963), 284). Bennett puts the point with even more zeal, claiming that the Third Analogy 'is a failure which is not even incidentally valuable except for a few flickers of light which it throws on the Second Analogy' (Kant's Analytic, 18I). On the side of neglect, Strawson (Bounds of Sense) devotes a little over a page to the Analogy, while Allison (Kant's Transcendental Idealism) ignores it altogether.

Judgement and Appearances the relevant order(s) of perceptions to rules that relate to something other than subjective states? Kant's general strategy in both Analogies involves linking the notion of the necessary order of perceptions to the concept of the rule-governedness of appearances, and this, in turn, to the causal nexus of the manifold of appearance itself. The notion of rulegovernedness thus acts largely as a mediate term, connecting the logical notion of the necessary order of perception with the experiential expression of this logical constraint via the principle that all things take place according to the law of cause and effect. The notion of a rule is designed to highlight the fact that the order of perceptions is determined, not by (serial) apprehension, but independently in the field of appearance itself. The idea of a rule is the expression of this independence: rule-governedness constituting the nomological force of the necessity attributed in the order of perceptions (objective irreversibility and objective reversibility). The motivation that drives the move from the order(s) of perception to rule-governedness of appearances is thus captured by the task of grounding the necessary order that is required for the deployment of the event template (either in its successive or simultaneous manifestation) in the field of appearances: the powers and -dispositions of the events and objects represented. The ability to discriminate the event of the ship moving upstream presupposes a set of rules that accounts for the constraint that bounds down the inherently underdetermined activity of apprehension. All things being equal (general truth structure), the perception of the event entails, for example, that the ship moves from the left to the right in our perceptual field. When our perception of the ship is obstructed by a bridge, we expect the ship to re-emerge after clearing the far end. Or if we cross the bridge and see the boat from the other bank, we can then expect the boat to move in our visual field from right to left. The notion of rule-governedness accentuates the importance Kant assigns to the necessary temporal and spatial positions of appearances as the basis for the necessary order attributed to our representations. The order of perceptions in inner sense is therefore in no way epistemologically privileged either in terms of being self-authenticating, or in terms of being temporally prior

Judgement and Appearances to object-oriented judgements. It is the rule-determined field of things represented that provides the constraint necessary to represent in a determinate way the inner order of ~2.Brehension: Thus if I perceive that something happens, then the first thing contained in this representation is that something precedes, for it is just in relation to this that the appearance acquires its temporal relation, that, namely, of existing after a preceding time in which it did not. But it can only acquire its determinate temporal position in this relation through something being presupposed in the preceding state on which it always follows, i.e., follows in accordance with a rule: from which it results, first, that I cannot reverse the series and place that which happens prior to that which it follows; and, second, that if the state that precedes is posited, then this determinate occurrence inevitably and necessarily follows. (B243-4; emphasis added)

The notion of rule-governedness is thus the first step in the experiential explication of the order we find in our perceptions. In the Second Analogy the rule dictates that 'I cannot reverse the order of succession' of my perception. They are bound down in one particular sequential pattern. In terms of time, this is the notion of temporal order: first A then B. In terms of the content of perception, when some one particular state of affairs is asserted, a following state of affairs necessarily follows. This rule, as we should expect, is the expression of the hypothetical form of judgement. It captures, in the form of a judgement, what we have recognized about the flow of our perceptions in the case of cognizing events: that we cannot reverse the order of perceptions and maintain the same perceptual content. I will expand on the experiential character of sequential rulegovernedness (causality) in the next section. For the moment the point I wish to emphasize is that rule-govemedness (in terms of succession) is merely the first step in the experiential expression of the hypothetical form of judgement. It is a mediate moment in the movement from the logical form of judgement in general to the real expression of judgement in an experiential setting (manifold of appearances). The notion of rule-governedness on its own is intended to give expression to a structural feature of representation that empiricists like Hume are prone to miss~­ namely, that there is a modal aspect involved in the cognition of an event:

Judgement and Appearances I also note that, if in the case of an appearance that contains a happening I call the preceding state of perception A and the following one B, then B can only follow A in apprehension, but the perception A canllot follow but only precede B. E.g., I see a ship driven downstream. My perception of its position downstream follows the perception of its position upstream, and it is impossible that in the apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be perceived downstream and afterc ward upstream. The order in the sequence of the perceptions in apprehension is therefore here determined, and the apprehension is bound to it. (B237)

The rule expressed by the ground-consequent judgement captures this modal feature of the epistemic template that is deployed when cognizing an .event. We see a parallel account of the role of rule-governedness in the Third Analogy. As with the Second Analogy, Kant begins with the order of perceptions-in this case, objective reversibility. To repreSent events and objects as simultaneous, we are required to acknowledge that the order of our perceptual engagement with them could be reversed. Although we may have seen A before B, if A and B are simultaneous, then the order of our perception could have been reversed. We might have seen B and then A. This "might" is underwritten by the disjunctive form of judgement. In disjunctive judgements we note not merely the presence or absence of, say, A or B, but also that A and B are coordinate with each other. If I affirm A, I explicitly exclude B. As Kant suggests: In order to be assured of this agreement (between the category of community and the disjulletive form of judgementlone must note that in all disjunctive judgments the sphere (the multitude of everything that is contained under it) is represented as a whole divided into parts (subordinate concepts,) and, since none of these can be contained under any other, they are thought of as coordinated with one another, not subordinated, so that they do not determine each other unilaterally, as in a series, but reciprocally, as in an aggregate (if one member of the division is posited, all the rest are excluded, and vice versa). (BII2)

The disjunctive form of judgement stands as the rule that sustains our ability to cognize the relation of mutual exclusion that simultaneity of events and objects requires. \Ve are able thus to

I66

Judgement and Appearances

explain how it can be the case that, although in the order of apprehension we would have mere presence and absence, in the actual case of object-oriented representatiort,-we are able to represent the possibilities as coordinate: that the presence of A in the mind merely excludes, rather than denies the existence of, the presence of B in the manifold of appearances. The experiential expression of this rule, the mutual and exhaustive influence of objects upon one another (as reciprocal ground and consequent) in the manifold at each moment of time is detailed in the following section where we develop Kant's argument from rule-governedness to ca-usality. But before we can move on to that part of the argument, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the disjunctive rule that grounds the possibility of the reversal of perceptions should be thought of in terms that include the perceiving subject as an element in the disjunctive set of relations among appearances. Including the subject of perception as an object within the manifold of appearance should be an uncontroversial claim. Our perceptual engagements with the world are modulated through and through by our spatiallocation(s). For example, when we judge ourselves as stationary or in motion, that judgement operates in a disjunctive relation to other empirical objects. We sense this most clearly in those cases where competing representational assignments are possible. If we are in a train and have the perception of another train passing, we are able to fix our interpretation (as to whether it is our train, or the other train, that is moving) on the basis of other objects and our judgements about their spatial character. We judge the other train to be moving because we note through its windows that the tree and hills remain with us in a static location. This perception is based on judgements contained in our general truth structure: all things being equal, trees and hills are not capable of intrinsic movement. Moreover, we can effect very fine-grained disjunctive judgements based, in simple cases, on static perception of static objects, and in more advanced cases with differential rates of velocity between moving subjects with moving objects. We can thus distinguish between apparent and real motion in our encounters with other objects because we perceive ourselves as a perceiving object within the manifold of appearance.

Judgement and Appearances

r67

TheKantian approach, on my reading, is sensitive to the obvious fact that the content of our perceptual states is the result of a dynamic relation between the perceiving subject (an empirical object like all others) and the (rest of) the world. We see the ship go from the right to the left if we are on the far bank, or from the left to the right if we cross to the other side. Our spatial location in this case operates as a constitutive feature in our perceptual interaction with the world. Longuenesse alludes to this role in the final pages of her treatment of the Third Analogy: Strikingly, when explaining the relation between dynamical community (the interaction of substances), simultaneity, and spatial community, Kant stresses the role played by our own body as a necessary mediator in our apprehension of the universal community of substance ... Through the light that strikes our eyes and 'plays between our bodies', we perceive their respective positions. Each objective change of spatial position of our body is made evident to us by tbe alteration of its relation to other bodies. Their relative positions are associated with various sensory qualities affecting U8. 16

Although Longuenesse goes on (mistakenly) to associate the subject's spatial orientation with the empirical unity of consciousness, her general point is correct. As all spatial relations are relational (in the same way as temporal coordinates are relational), we should expect Kant to offer an account of the modulated character of our dynamic interactions with the world in the Third Analogy. Objects appear larger as we get closer to them or as they get closer to us. Sounds become louder as we approach their source, or quieter as the object retreats. The perceptual content of the perceiving subject is thus in part determined by the disjunctive spatial relation all subjects confront in determining their objective simultaneous relations with the rest of the empirical world. To this we can add that the involvement of the subject can also take the form of non-spatial considerations. It may be that the subject, remaining in one spatial location, simply directs her attention first to one object, and then to another. As Kant suggests: 'Thus I can direct my perception first to the moon and 16

Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge, 39I.

I68

Judgement and Appearances

subsequently to the earth, or, conversely, first to the earth and then subsequently to the moon, and on this account, since the perceptions of these objects can follow eackother reciprocally, I say that they exist simultaneously' (B257). In this case the epistemic task settles on the general problem of the Third Analogy, which involves explicating how the subject can be thought to be oriented spatially in a way that makes the order of perception reversible. The problem is still one of making sense of the disjunctive relation between objects (including the perceiving subject). It is simply made a bit easier in static cases of perception because we do not have to integrate spatial modulation; a fixed subject simplifies the relatively determined judgements. As much as the rule embodied in the Third Analogy is discussed at all in secondary sources, it is viewed primarily as Kant's attempt at establishing the coexistence of empirical objects by means of the reversibility of our perceptions without reference to the spatial orientation of the subject of perception. l ? Guyer thus reads the Analogy as offering a rule (mutual determination) that 'explain[s] how we can be justified in judging that states of affairs coexist, on the basis of our necessarily successive perception of them', where the perceptual content concerning these "states of affairs" makes no reference to the spatial orientation of the subject. is Guyer's view expresses a common reading of the Third Analogy. On my view, Guyer's interpretation of the scope of the Third Analogy is misleading. I agree with his assertion that the disjunctive mode of judging is concerned with the mutual and exhaustive determination of objects by one another. But I see no reason, apart from a lingering Cartesian separation of subject 17 Guyer notes, and rejects, the occasional attempts that have been made to integrate the perceiving subject into the Third Analogy (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 451 n. I). His dismissal of Nagel's attempt is puzzling: 'he commits the opposite error of inflating its significance beyond reason by mistaking its argument for community among objects as an argument for the community between subject and object and even among cognitive subjects. This makes the Third Analogy trespass onto the territory of the Refutation of Idealism and beyond.' I agree with Guyer that Nagel's reading anticipates arguments in the Refutation. Unlike Guyer, I take this as a sign of promise. 18 Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 269.

Judgement and Appearances and object, to preclude placing the subject of perception in the world of empirical objects. In other words, the Third Analogy, with its spatial characterization of simultaneity (the coexistence of objects in each moment of time), includes within the field of appearances the empirical self. The disjunctive form of judging, and the corresponding rule of mutual determination, not only operates, as Guyer suggests, on the "perception of them" (external objects of our beliefs), but also includes the subject's spatial orientation to the world as a content-determining element. We are one of "them". Putting the perceiving subject into the manifold of appearance helps us to appreciate Kant's claim that our ability to reverse the perceptions of the moon and the horizon is rooted in the medi~ ate relation of these objects through our acts of cognition. We could have first viewed the horizon and then the moon: The light, which plays between our eyes and the heavenly bodies, effects a mediate community between us and the latter and thereby proves the simultaneity of the latter, and that we cannot empirically alter our position, and perceive this alteration, without matter everywhere making the perception of our position possible; and only by means of its reciprocal influence can it establish their simultaneity and thereby the coexistence of even the most distant object (though only mediately). (B260; emphasis added, translation modified slightly)

The inclusion of the dynamical relations 'between us and the latter [objects]', as well as the involvement of modulated perceptual judgements related to 'empirically changing our position', all point to the inclusion of the perceiving subject in the dynamical community.

3.I.6. The Experiential Expression of Rule-Governedness: Causality From the notion of the rule-governedness of appearances in the Second and Third Analogies, it is but a short step to the fullblown notion of causality. Causality is the empirical expression of what we mean by rule-governed connections among appearances. As Kant suggests:

170

Judgement and Appearances

Thus the relation of appearances (as pO,ssible perceptions), in accordance with which the existence of that wllich succeeds (what happens) is determined in time necessarily and ilia'ccordance with a rule by something that precedes it, consequently the relation of cause to effect, is the condition of the objective validity of our empirical judgments with regard to the series of perceptions, thus of their empirical truth, and therefore of experience. (B247) This rule for determining something with respect to its temporal sequence, however, is that in what precedes, the condition is to be encountered under which the occurrence always (i.e., necessarily) follows. Thus the principle of sufficient reason is the ground of possible experience, namely the objective cognitio~ of appearances with regard to their relation in the successive series of time. (B24s-6)

Kant treats the concept of causal connection as the empirical instantiation of rule-governedness: the latter is the pure logical entailment mandated by a rule; the former is the real expression of this nomological relation in the field of phenomena. In the case of the Second Analogy, the rule is the hypothetical form of judgement: if A then B. The experiential expression of this form of judgement is the empirical relation of cause and effect: where A obtains, B follows (in time) necessarily. In the case of the Third Analogy, we move from the rule-governedness mandated by the disjunctive form of judgement A or B, to its experiential expression in the form of the mutual casual determination (in each moment of time) of each empirical object. Thus in the perception that the ship is going downstream we are invoking a mode of judging, the schematizing application of this mode (objective temporal order) and the appearances cognized in accordance with the schematized mode of judging (that the objective states of affairs instantiates the appropriate causal connections). Describing empirical objects as rule-governed is to describe a causal relation. It is also to describe a determinate temporal relation and to posit an internally determined ground for the alteration in the appearance itself. As Kant suggests in connection with the Second Analogy: [I] Thus if I perceive that something happens, then the first thing contained in this representation is that something precedes, for it is just in relation to this that the appearance acquires its temporal relation, that, namely, of existing after a preceding time in which it did not. [2] But it

Judgement and Appearances

I7 I

can only acquire its determinate temporal position in this relation through something being presupposed in the preceding state on which it always follows, i.e., follows in accordance with a rule: from which it results, first, that I cannot reverse the series and place that which happens prior to that which it follows; and, second, that if the state that precedes is posited, than this determinate occurrence inevitably and necessarily follows. (8243-4)

In the first sentence Kant introduces the epistemic template of an event. When we judge that "something has happened", we assert the existence of objects in a determinate temporal relation: the irreversibility of perceptions. The first clause in the second sentence asserts the presence of a rule that must be operative such that we view the perceptions as ordered in one, and only one, particular pattern. The rule-governed order of objects, such that 'if the state that precedes is posited, then this determinate occurrence inevitably and necessarily follows', is experientially expressed through the causal powers and dispositions we impart to the empirical objects our beliefs are about. 19 The argllment as it pertains to the Third Analogy is the same in structure as the Second-moving from reversibility, to rulegovernedness, to causality. As we saw in the previous section, the task of the rule supplied in the Third Analogy is to explain and ground the requirement of the objective reversibility of perceptions. How are we to explain our ability to unify perceptions of objects under the temporal frame of simultaneity given that the subjective act of apprehension is inherently successive? How can we view perceptions as reversible and still consider the content of those perceptions to represent the same state of affairs: that A to E is the same as E to A? T'he rule describes the mutual influence of each object of perception. The experiential expression of this rule is the reciprocal causal determination of every empirical object (including the perceiving subject) in the manifold of appearance at each moment of time: [r] In addition to the mere existence there must therefore be something through which A determines the position of B in time, and conversely also something by which B does the same for A since only under this 19 The details of the connection between reasons and causes are worked out by reflective judgement, not by the spontaneous activity of the understanding.

I7 2

Judgement and Appearances

condition can those substances be empirically represented as existing simultaneously. [2] Now only that deterniines the position of another in time which is the cause of it or its deterrri'mations. [3] Thus each substance ... must simultaneously contain the causality of the other, i.e., they must stand in dynamical community (immediately or mediately) if their simultaneity is to be cognized in any possible experience. (B259)

In the first sentence Kant reiterates his general theme of time determination. In those cases where the order of perception is indifferent with respect to the objective content represented by those perceptions, we have to explain and ground our ability to order the relevant perceptions in two competing objective patterns. The rule introduced to explain this is simply the idea that there must be something in the objects represented that determines their objective temporal position. That "something" is a rule of mutual influence. In the following sentence he introduces the theme developed in the Second Analogy: that influence of one object upon another is experientially expressed by means of the cause/effect relation. The third sentence draws out the lesson as it pertains to the Third Analogy's concept of mutual influence-namely, that each object must stand as the ground of consequences found in the other. The simultaneous existence of the represented objects can thus be represented as coordinate witb either pattern of our perceptions: A to E or E to A. As Kant suggests in an introductory remark from the Analytic of Concepts: Now a similar connection is thought of in an entirety of things, since one is not subordinated, as effect, under another, as the cause of its existence, but is rather coordinate with the other simultaneously and reciprocally as cause with regard to its determinations ... which is an entirely different kind of connection from that which is to be found in the mere relation of cause to effect (of ground to consequence), in which the consequence does not reciprocally determine the ground and therefore does not constitute a whole with the latter. (BIn)

Now, the shift from rule-governedness to causality in both Analogies is motivated, as Bird suggests, by the conceptual move from logical order to causal structure: 'the idea of a determinate order between two states presupposes that of something which determines it; and this idea of a determinant or reason for such

Judgement and Appearances an order is that of a cause ... Kant has, therefore, some ground for saying that the concept of a cause is required for our discrimination of a time order in phenomena.'2o As Bird correctly notes, there is no gap in Kant's argument. The move from logical issues related to conceptual requirements necessary for the cognition of an event, to the real (phenomenal) manifestation of these conceptual conditions, is natural and well grounded. This also explains why the experiential concepts of cause/effect and mutual determination have modal force. We should expect this, given that these principles are derived from their corresponding modes of judgement. At its simplest, Kant's claim is that the logical principles necessary for the discrimination of events and objects involve the requirement that the manifold of appearance be regarded as embodying an intrinsic causal structure: a movement from the rational structure of the pure concepts to their experiential instantiation (Principles) as causal relations. The scaffolding of temporal strllctures extends both sequentially and laterally in conformity with the temporal structures of successiveness and simultaneity.

3.I.7. Unity-in-the-Object

The links between the notions of the necessary order of perception, rule-governedness, and cause-and-effect constitute a family of arguments all directed to the original problem posed by the underdetermination of apprehension: that empirical content and temporal structure cannot be derived from the subjective character of apprehension. The Second and Third Analogies confront this problem directly with an analysis that secures the determination of the objective temporal structures necessary to account for the kind of successive and simultaneous experience of objects that we enjoy. The principle that "all changes take place according to the law of the connection of cause and effect" expresses the real grounds necessary for the deployment of the event concept. The principle that 'all substances, insofar as they 20

Bird, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, r6x.

i'

174

Judgement and Appearances

are perceived in space as simultaneous, are in thoroughgoing interaction' expresses the real grbunds for the cognition of events occurring simultaneously. These principles thus lie at the heart of the conditions that make experience of events and objects possible. As Kant suggests, the principle 'is valid for all objects of experience (under the conditions of succession), since it is itself the ground of the possibility of such an experience' (B247)· The privileged position Kant grants to these epistemic conditions as the ground for the representation of events also should serve to calm the common worry that Kant has overplayed his hand: the worry that Kant may have demonstrated that causal rules are necessary for the discrimination of events, but he has not yet demonstrated the seemingly broader claim that every alteration must have a necessary cause. If, as suggested, the causal principles borrow their nomological force from the corresponding forms of judgement, and if the representation of events requires the deployment of these principles, then the fear of nomological looseness at the macro level is discharged. Necessity is encoded in the mode of representation itself. In addition, as these are the conditions for the original discrimination of events in toto, they apply to all alterations. Each and every change in the manifold of appearance is determined according to judgement's rule-determined relations of cause and effect, and reciprocal causal determination. Worries that lurk beyond these conditions are idle in so far as they stand outside the conditions of the possibility of experience. The analysis of the connection between the order of perceptions necessary for the discrimination of an event, and the requirement of an intrinsic causal nexus as a necessary condition for the inner order of perceptions, is now complete. What remains to be discussed is how these principles connect with the role of the First Analogy.21 We have seen that the Analogies as a whole are concerned with the task of explicating the objective structures necessary for the possibility of experience. We have seen also that the dominant 21 Unlike my treatment of the two preceding Analogies, I am concerned in this section more with the role of the Analogy than with offering a detailed account of the argument provided.

Judgement and Appearances

175

task of the Analogies centres on Kant's central concern: 'what do I understand by the question, how the manifold may be combined in the appearance itself (which is yet nothing in itself)' (B2 36 )? Kant's reply to this question has been canvassed in terms that look to the importance he attaches to the discriminatory concepts that allow us to regard our perceptual judgements as determined by an independent objective domain: what Kant calls unity-in-the-object. As introduced in Chapter I, this notion first appears in the Transcendental Deduction. There Kant is concerned primarily with the original synthetic unity of apperception: the "I think". It is essential that all our representations come under the unity of the formal subject of cognition. Nonetheless, this, as Kant points out, is not a sufficient condition for cognition. Determinate representation also demands that intuition be united under a concept of an object or event (B137). This is the objective pole of representation. Kant thus poses the above question in the Second Analogy because it is here that the discrimination of events-the fundamental discriminatory concept of empirical cognition-is developed. The Third Analogy, as we have seen, develops this theme further, providing an account of how it is possible to represent events and objects as simultaneous given that the order of apprehension is always successive. Where does the First Analogy fit into this requirement for unity-in-the-object? How does it complement the arguments of the Second and Third? Kant introduces the Analogy with the principle that 'in all change of appearances substance persists, and its quantum is neither increased nor diminished in nature' (B224). It is important to note that, despite appearances, the First Analogy is not an attempt at armchair physics or a desire to harmonize Kant's metaphysics with Newtonian physics. 22 Although Kant himself 22 This approach has been championed most recently by Michael Friedman's influential book, Kant and the Exact Sciences. I agree with Friedman that Kant's analysis has many points of contact with the science of his day. I disagree with the view that Kant is attempting (in the Critique) to unite his very general investigation into the transcendental conditions of experience with the much higher-order reflective concerns relating to the possibility of natural science. I do grant, however, that Kant found it unsurprising and

Judgement and Appearances muddies the waters occasionally by noting how his analysis of the conditions for representatiofl is consistent with the best physics of his day, we should resi~{ the temptation of placing too much emphasis on Kant's remarks in this context. Kant is not indulging in speculative empirical science in the Critique of Pure Reason. His interest lies with the broad problem of the conditions necessary for the discrimination of events and objects. 23 We have seen that the critical thrust of Kant's general position in the Analogies supports the claim that it is only by considering the order of our perceptions to be determined by the powers we attribute to independently existing' empirical objects (appearances) that we are able to account for the determinacy of mental content. In other words, it is the represented causal nexus of the manifold of appearance-how the manifold is connected in the phenomenon itself-that constrains the underdetermined order of apprehension. As Kant suggests: the order of the sequence (what must precede and what must follow) is not determined in the imagination at all, and the series of successive representations can be taken backwards just as well as forwards. But if this synthesis is a synthesis of apprehension (of the manifold of a given appearance), then the order in the object is determined ... (B246; emphasis added)

The notion of unity-in-the-object is central to Kant's response to the question concerning "how can the manifold be connected in the phenomenon itself?" The Second and Third analogies posit unity in the objective manifold, but they require a real (phenomenal) grounding of the manifold of appearance to make this logical requirement a reality. In other words, the properties of objects to act in rule-governed ways requires a real, dispositional grounding. This is the task of the First Analogy. We know from the Second Analogy, for example, that the conception of change presupposes 'one and the same subject as existing with two opposed determinations, and thus as persistencouraging that his approach to the possibility of experience made possible further analysis concerning the transcendental grounds for the possibility of natural science. 23 While Kant had great respect for the Newtonian world view, we know from the Antinomies and Kant's treatment of matter that he clearly believed it to be flawed in some respects.

Judgement and Appearances

I77

ing' (B233). The .role of the permanence of substance in the First Analogy is motivated by the requirement of the Second and Third that a self-identical real subject be posited throughout every alteration. In the context of assessing the requirements necessary for discriminating empirical activity, Kant states: Action already signifies the relation of the subject of causality to the effect. Now since all effect consists in that which happens, consequently in the changeable, which indicates succession in time, the ultimate subject of the changeable is therefore that which persists, as the substratum of everything that changes, i.e., the substance. For according to the principle of causality actions are always the primary ground of all change of appearances, and therefore cannot lie in a subject that itself changes, since otherwise further actions and another subject, which determines this change, would be required. (B250)

It is productive, I believe, to model the role of the principle of permanence in terms that coordinate it with the conceptual requirements necessary to discriminate an alteration. 24 This applies as much to successive events as to simultaneous causeand-effect relations. The permanence of the substratum should be viewed as a conceptual demand built into the template of an alteration. Kant is not arguing that empirical objects, of whatever dimension (atoms to elephants), cannot be annihilated, or change form radically. This is to confuse the a priori concept of substance as substratum, with the empirical concept of substance(s) as empirical objects. 25 No doubt possible experience is full of, as yet, unexplained phenomena. There are many dispositional properties in the world that have yet to reveal themselves. Kant's claim is, instead, of a conceptual nature, connected to the conditions necessary for the possibility of representing alterations. As illustrated in the final sentence in the above passage, Kant is concerned with the conceptual properties that we must assign to the material substratum of the manifold of appearances. He is looking for a basis in the object, for grounding the required enabling constraint on powers such that we can, as is 24 Longuenesse makes a similar claim, suggesting that 'the First Analogy remains extremely obscure if considered in isolation form the Second and Third' (Kant and the Capacity to Judge, 335). 25 Bennett's well-known "pig-in-the-jar" attack on the First Analogy is a good example of this misunderstanding. See Bennett, Kant's Analytic, 188-89.

Judgement and Appearances required, represent appearances as rule governed (causally determined). / As we have seen, Kant's description of the inner order of our perceptions as being subject to a rule is a restatement of the priority he attaches to the need for an independent constraint on apprehension as a condition for the original representation of objects. It is not the case that Kant thinks we have unclear and imprecise subjective representations of objects that are then clarified and fine-tuned (somehow) according to objective temporal and empirical considerations. The case, as already indicated by the strong underdetermination thesis, is that reference-to-an-object conditions the possibility of "subjective" representations themselves. As Kant suggests: 'Understanding belongs to all experience and its possibility, and the first thing that it does for this is not to make the representation of the objects distinct, but rather to make the representations of an object possible at all' (B244-S). The substance-attribute (inherence) relation of the First Analogy thus plays a fundamental logical role in securing the real (phenomenal) ground necessary for the discrimination of events and objects. Without it, the rule-governedness of the manifold of appearance would float free of any determination in the object itself. Rules would be (per impossible) a mere artefact of a cognizing subject as opposed to being the outcome of the inherent powers and dispositions of the objects represented by the mind. Accordingly we see Kant's position as moving from the logical requirement of a subject of possible predicates, to the experiential expression of this logical relation as the permanent (unchanging) character of substance in which real (material) properties express themselves in rule-governed, causal alterations. Without the permanence of substance, event discrimination (successive or simultaneous) would not be possible: Now on this persistence there is also grounded a correction of the concept of alteration. Arising and perishing are not alterations of that which arises or perishes. Alteration is a way of existing that succeeds another way of existing of the very same object. Hence everything that is altered is lasting, and only its state changes. Thus since this change concerns only the determinations that can cease or begin, we can say, in an expression that seems somewhat paradoxical, that only what

Judgement and Appearances

I79

persists (the substance) is altered, while that which is changeable docs not suffer any alteration but rather a change, sin'ce some determinations cease and others begin. (B23Q--r)

It is important to recognize that the cogency of Kant's account of substance does not depend on our abilities actually (per impossible) to perceive the substratum in which all change operates. The substratum is not an object of perception any more than we perceive causality. Kant agrees with Locke and Hume on this empirical point. This is why we need a transcendental schema for the subject/predicate relation. For unlike all empirical objects, there is no purely empirical schema of the substratum (unlike a "dog" in which we can form an image from an empit;ical schema: four-footed animal, furry, and so on). Substance, like causality, is an experiential concept, involving pure concepts (subject/predicate) temporally schematized (persistence of the real in time) over the domain of appearances. If we view the role of the First Analogy in the context of the necessity for externally grounding the required notion of unity-inthe-object, we can then see that the Kantian strategy for responding to the question "what do I understand by the question, how the manifold may be combined in the appearance itself" is effectively to reverse how the force of question is generally registered. The worry is no longer over how we regard the manifold of appearances as intrinsically connected given (the empirical idealist assumption) that all we have at our disposal are internal determinations. Instead, Kant's redescription of the problem begins with the opposing claim that reference to the inherent structure of the manifold of appearances conditions the possibility of determinate inner representation. The task then becomes one of explicating how the synthetic, a priori, modes of judgement create the framework for this determinate mode of representation that we call experience. The role of the First Analogy is connected directly, in this context, to the support it yields to the Second and Third Analogies in making real the notion of a logical subject (material disposition) for possible objects of experience. 26 26 This is in keeping with my general contention that the Analogies form a seamless argument for temporal and content determination. The First Analogy is not Kant's response to Locke's conception of substance nor is it targeted directly to Hume's scepticism of substance.

Judgement and Appearances

I80

The empirical realist's requirement of the independence of empirical reality thus dovetails cleanly with the unity-in-theobject account of representation: If we investigate what new characteristic is given to our representations by the relation to an object, a!nd what is the dignity that they thereby receive, we find that it does nothing beyond making the combination of representations necessary in a certain way, and subjecting them to a rule; and conversely that objective significance is conferred on our representations only insofar as a certain order in their temporal relation is necessary. (B242-3)

Although I do not intend to offer i survey of challenges that have been launched against Kant's argument, for immediate purposes it is worth considering one of the dominant criticisms. Critics claim that Kant is entitled only to the empirical notion of relatively enduring substances, and not the genuine permanence of substance. For example, in Guyer's otherwise well-intended attack on the standard empiricist objections to the permanence of substance, he suggests that: Kant's argument is that there can be no adequate evidence for the occurrence of any objective change at all unless we can produce some substance now in a state incompatible with the continued existence of that which is alleged to have been annihilated. That can be only the same substance in another state. Of course, Kant would not treat something such as a porcelain pig as a genuine substance. This is precisely because, even without considering a made-up case like Bennett's, we would never think of something such as that as anything other than a relatively enduring object. 27

Guyer's argument is directed against the traditional empiricist assertion that Kant is concerned with the conditions necessary for the reidentification of particular objects. Guyer correctly points out that Kant's account of substance is developed in terms of the demand for a logical subject that grounds the unity necessary for representing change. This returns to the claim we examined earlier in which Kant asserts that the representation of an alteration 'is the combination of contradictorily opposed determinations in the existence of one and the same thing' (B29I). The minimal conceptual requirement necessary for the 27

Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge,

232.

Judgement and Appearances

I8I

representation of change thus entails that the opposing states (at different temporal locations) are combined in an abiding subject. Unfortunately Guyer's alternative position confuses the justificatory question, "What evidence do we have for confirming an alteration?", with the question of the necessary conditions for representing an alteration. Guyer, on my view, is guilty of misidentifying the level of Kant's concerns. 28 If the question is evidentially driven, as Guyer seems to believe, then how could we ever possibly know that it was the same "substance in another state"? Since we do not perceive the substratum, and cannot draw empirical inferences to it, there is no possible empirical procedure for addressing this necessary (on Guyer's reading) worry. The conceptual requirement of a permanent substratum is not the sort of thing that can be put under the microscope for verification. Fortunately, Kant's argument does not demand evidence of the continued existence of substance. The worry over verification is second-order concern. Kant's argument requires merely the conceptual necessity that there is a material basis for the attributes we assign to objects: that alteration is attributable to the dispositional qualities of the object itself. Again, the point is not that we must have (per impossible) justified empirical belief that the substratum never alters. Instead, the analysis of experience requires the permanence of the substratum as a conceptual constraint necessary for the subject/attribute, disposition/action pairings that underpin the field of truth-conditions that judgement requires· in order to discriminate events and objects. Without the ability to view the actions of objects as constrained by their dispositional character-their inner character-there is no way of deploying truth-structures, and therefore no way of creating the holistic perceptual contexts in which our beliefs emerge and are tested. Unity-in-the-object requires a primitive substratum (the logical subject of change) as the basis for representing the real (phenomenal) dispositional qualities that ground the powers we attribute to objects.

a

28 See the traditional empiricist readings of Bennett, Strawson, Prichard, Walker, and Wilkerson for similar misconceptions.

Judgement and Appearances The role of substance, interpreted as the logical subject for change, is not merely a marker of externality (in space), nor an empirical claim that, if mobilized effectively, might serve to sustain the realist interpretation on its own. On the Priority-ofJudgement interpretation, the requirement of a permanent substratum ties the independence of the manifold of appearance directly to the conditions necessary for representation. We secure the representation of objects on the condition that the powers of objects, revealed through perception, are considered as issuing from an independent, dispositional basis in the appearance itself. The First Analogy thus confirms the realist requirement that the manifold of appearance is to be viewed as 'combined in the appearance itself .. .' (Bz36). This completes the extended argument of the Analytic; moving from the revealed order of perceptions, to rule-governedness, to causality, to unity in the independent domain of the manifold of appearances. It is by means of the relations intrinsic to the objects represented that representations, as modifications of the mind, are given. Unity-in-the-object is the central expression of this requirement.

3.r.8. An Important Challenge

Guyer presents an argument that has a potentially damaging effect on my general approach to the Analogies. His objections, levelled primarily against Bird's interpretation, constitute a significant challenge to the intelligibility of the case developed above. Guyer suggests that the discriminatory approach 'involves a radical misunderstanding of Kant's conception of our epistemic situation in attempting to distinguish between merely subjective and genuinely objective successions'.29 Guyer's attack is simple and direct. He argues that the discriminatory approach: seems to presuppose that we are actually given knowledge of events, and can then use our knowledge that there is a determinate succession to infer further conclusions, such as that there is a cause for that suc29

Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge,

252.

Judgement and Appearances cession. But this is precisely the opposite of what Kant assumes. Kant's idea is that we are not given knowledge of objective successions but that we must infer that from something-namely, nothing other than a law which explains why, in the given circumstances, one succession rather than another should obtain. In other words, on Kant's theory causal laws are not logical consequences of determinacy but the epistemological preconditions of knowledge of determinacy.3o

The last sentence is this passage is a wonderfully concise expression of the dimensions of the interpretative dispute. Guyer huilds his interpretation of the Analogies, the Second in particular, on the premiss that it is knowledge of causal laws that grounds possible experience. lIe reintroduces Kant's ship example to make the point clear: Kant's claim is that, given only two successive observations of positions of the ship, which in imagination can be set in either of two orders, it can be determined that they represent (for example) the ship's sailing downstream only if, in the circumstances which are being assumed, it would be impossible [materially J for that ship to be sailing upstream. Kant's theory is precisely that it is only if we are in possession of causal laws which dictate that in the relevant circumstancethat is, not in general, but in the particular circumstances of wind, tide, setting of the sails, and so forth, which are assumed to obtain-the ship could only sail downstream, that we actually have sufficient evidence to interpret our representation of it to mean that it is sailing downstream. Bird's derivation of the necessity of a cause from the identification of the event Kant's question of just how we can identify the event. 31

If, as it appears, Guyer's interpretation requires that representation obtains only if we have knowledge of causal laws, then his charge is rather less than convincing. As Bird rightly suggests, the idea that representation demands knowledge of causal laws is intuitively unappealing: 'It would clearly be absurd to imagine that we must know the cause of something's happening before we can say that it has happened. Ordinarily we inquire into the specific causes of something only when we know [believe] that a certain event has taken place.'32 Longuenesse responds directly to Guyer's charge, claiming that 'Kant's argument for the conditions 30

Ibid.

31

Ibid.

32

Bird, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, r6I.

Judgement and Appearances of our representing objective change is prior ... to any epistemic argument for the empirical verifiability of our belief that this or that objective change has occurred ... Guyer's reading rests on a misunderstanding. '33 Allison develops a similar counterclaim, suggesting that, 'if not incoherent, the proposition that I can confirm a judgment of temporal succession only if I can subsume this succession under a known causal law is plausible neither in its own right nor as an interpretation of Kant:'34 Certainly Kant is committed to the view that there are causal laws in play. On the Priority-of-Judgement view, without the inclusion of a causal nexus that exp,resses the intrinsic structure of the manifold of appearances, no object or event could be individuated. The discrimination of events and objects demands necessary, causal relations as a precondition of objective temporal structure. Nevertheless, the Kantian requirement is not that we know particular causal laws, but rather that these laws must be presupposed in general as a condition of the possibility of representation. We find them later in our acts of reflective judgement. Kant's concern in the Analytic of Principles is with the formal strncture necessary for event discrimination, not with the particular causal connections we assign on the basis of the empirical evidence before us. In the Second Analogy Kant affirms this view: there is an order among our representations, in which the present one (insofar as it has come to be) points to some preceding state as a correlate, to be sure still undetermined, of this event that is given, which is, however, determinately related to the latter, as its consequence, and necessarily connected with it in the temporal series. (B244)

Consider the following passages from the Dialectic and the Critique of Judgement: For if one cannot presuppose the highest purposiveness in nature a priori, i.e., as belonging to the essence of nature, then how can one be assigned to seek it out ... The regulative principle demands that sysLonguenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge, 337-8. Allison, review of 'Kant and the Claims of Knowledge', Journal of Philosophy, 86 (1989), 214~~22. See also Allison's critique of Friedman's similar position in 'Causality and Causal Laws in Kant: A Critique of Michael Friedman', in Kant and Contemporary Epistemology (Netherlands: Kluwer Academie Publishers, 1994), 291-307. 33

34

Judgement and Appearances

I8S

tematic unity be presupposed absolutely as a unity in nature that is recognized not only empirically but also a priori, though still indeterminately, and hence as following from the essence of things. (B72I) As the light of our understanding goes, but still, if they are to be called laws, (as the concept of nature requires), they must be regarded as necessaryon a principle, unknown though it be to us, of the unity of the manifold. (CJ ISO)

Unlike Guyer, Kant is not claiming that we must know particular casual laws as a condition of objective representation. He is asserting instead that the conceptual requirements built into the notion of an alteration demand the general representation of a causal order, even though this order may not be empirically evident. In Kant's words, 'they must be regarded as necessary on a principle, unknown though it be to us, of the unity of the manifold'. Thus, even without knowing precisely what the causal structure is, the governing idea that there is an inherent causal nexus in the manifold of appearance serves sufficiently to constrain the representation of an alteration. 35 Kant's task in the Analytic is to explicate the a priori conditions that make event and object discrimination possible. Knowledge of causal laws is the product of reflective judgement, not the spontaneous judgements of the understanding.

3.2. THE REFUTATION OF IDEALISM 3.2.0. Introduction

The priority assigned to objective considerations developed thus far leaves two important questions unanswered: (1) what is the Kantian response to the problem of error, and (2) does empirical realism offer a strategy for answering the problem of scepticism? While these problems are of general epistemological interest, they occupy a particularly important place in the Priority-ofJudgement interpretation. The fifth principle (the anti-sceptical principle) of the fundamental features of empirical realism 35 Chapter 5 will expand this discussion to include Kant's transcendental requirement of the systematicity of nature as a whole.

186

Judgement and Appearances

states that the collective force of our beliefs about the empirical world cannot be radically false. If considerations of truth and reference are central for the possibility of determinate representation, then empirical realism may appear to involve the untenable view that belief is inherently veridical by nature. Conversely, if the possibility of error is interpreted in terms of referential failure, then Kant's attack on the pre-critical epistemic paradigm loses much of its force. Some mental ~ontent, in that case, would not require genuine objective reference. Either way, the Refutation of Idealism is crucial for accurately assessing the viability of the empirical realist arguments in the Analytic. The Refutation of Idealism is a short, seven-paragraph section designed to build on the results of the Analogies. Its incorporation in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason was motivated by Kant's desire to respond explicitly to the charge of empirical idealism levelled at the first edition of the Critique. It incensed Kant that his realist commitment to the existence of external objects, and their independent causal relations, had been reduced to a "higher form" of Berkeleyian idealism. 36 For my purposes the Refutation is important because it serves as a testimony of how Kant himself viewed the realist force of the arguments in the Analogies. The Refutation offers no arguments not already implicitly contained in the Analogies. Its addition to the second edition of the Critique was for the explicit purpose of drawing out the anti-idealist ramifications of the Analytic, ramifications that, to Kant's surprise, had not been apprt;ciated by commentators of the first edition. Although Kant offers this section as a proof, it is on my view better understood as the critical culmination of themes developed in the Analogies. The central thrust of Kant's position is the empirical realist view that 'internal experience in general is possible only through external experience in general' (B278). Kant's attack on the priority empirical idealism assigns to inner-sense is simultaneously an assault on the framework that makes radical scepticism possible. This is why Kant suggests that we must prove 'that even our inner experience, undoubted by Descartes, is possible only under the presupposition of external experience' (B27S). 36

Beginning with the Feder-Garve review.

Judgement and Appearances We shall see in the remainder of this chapter how the Priorityof-Judgement interpretation of empirical realism offers a compelling reading of the connection between Kant's attack 011 the pre-critical epistemic paradigm, and his assertion that radical scepticism is unintelligible. The structure of this section is as follows: (I) brief overview of Kant's argument, (2) reflections on the cogency of Kant's treatment of error, (3) discussion of significance of the anti-sceptical argument, and (4) summary of the results of the Priority-ofJudgement interpretation developed thus far.

3.2.T. Outline of the argument of the Refutation

The following is the thesis and entire proof of the Refutation: Thesis

The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in stJace outside me. Proof

[lJ I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time. [2] All determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception. [3] This permanent cannot, however, be something in me, since it is only through this permanent that my existence in time can itself be determined. [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. [5] Now consciousness [of my existence] in time is necessarily bound up with consciousness 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 timedetermination. [6] In other words, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me. (B276)

The proof aims to establish the independent existence of empirical objects: that objects exist in space and time independently of our thoughts about them. This is not a late theme in the Critique. Kant announces in the Preface to the second

188

Judgement and Appearances

edition that his approach is intended to purge the 'scandal to philosophy' (Bxxxix) constituted by radical SCeptiCIsm. Confirming the realist credentials of the Analytic of Principles is a guiding theme of the Kantian programme from the beginning. The proof begins by asserting that I am conscious of myself as an empirical being existing in time. As the Refutation is directed against the Cartesian epistemic paradigm, it is not extraordinary that Kant begins with the concept of the self.37 Kant emphasizes that we have empirical knowledge not of the pure (formal) subject of thought (the mere "I think" (the original unity of apperception)) but of the empirical self in time. The self on which the proof rests is the empirical self which is conscious of the determinate flow of its inner representations. Fundamental to the identification of the self is the stress Kant puts on the determinacy of inner experience. In a note added to the Refutation in the Preface to the second edition, Kant reaffirms the restricted character of the claim: 'my existence in time (consequently, also, of its determinability in time), and this is more than merely being conscious of my representation; yet it is identical with the empirical consciousness of my existence, which is only determinable through a relation to something that, while being bound up with my existence, is outside me' (Bxl). This passage reinforces the interpretation that the first sentence of the proof is intended simply to assert that the self has determinate inner experience. No claims concerning the veridicalor non-veridical character of the representation of the self is made or assumed. The second line of the Refutation is the shortest and the most important. It refers explicitly to the arguments contained in the 37 As is made clear below, Kant's inclusion of the self as the focus of the proof against the intelligibility of radical scepticism should not be construed too narrowly-i.e. as arguing for the existence of objects of ollter sense by means exclusively related to the concept of the self. Although Kant uses the concept of the empirical self in his attack on idealism, the broad thrust of his proof centres on the necessity of an intrinsically structured outer domain (manifold of appearances) as a condition for determinate inner sense (of the self or anything else). I suggest there is nothing special or unique about the self as an empirical object except that, as we each possess one, it is a potent example. The interpretative danger is of slipping back into the broad Cartesian view that we have special access (introspective) to a special object (the self) existing in, or identified with, inner sense itself.

Judgement and Appearances First Analogy grounding temporal determination on the supposition of a permanent substratum. Although Kant refers explicitly to permanence as the ground for perception of objects, there is a danger that this sentence may be interpreted as connecting Kant's argument exclusively to the First Analogy. This would be a mistake. In the preceding section it was demonstrated that the Analogies are best understood as a set of mutually supporting arguments designed to secure the reality of the manifold of appearance as an independent, and intrinsically structured, whole. The presence and powers of objects are viewed as united in the objective manifold. The lesson carried forward from the Analogies is that, in order to account for the discrimination of events and objects, a determinate temporal and causal structure is presupposed as a precondition of inner representation. The notion of an enduring substratum is thus offered as a necessary conceptual constraint that allows us to view our successive perceptions as intrinsically determined in the object. This notion of unity in the object, as discussed above, also includes the presence of the perceiving subject within the manifold of appearances. The requirement of the permanent substratum thus applies to all objects within the manifold of appearance, including the perceiving, empirical self. The third sentence reaffirms the role of the permanent, locating it outside inner sense. The following note added to the second edition of the first Critique explicitly connects the notion of the permanent with outer sense: 'inner experience itself, depends on something permanent, which is not in me, and consequently must be outside me, and I must consider myself in relation to it; thus for an experience in general to be possible, the reality of outer sense is necessarily bound up with that of inner sense ... ' (Bxl-xli, footnote). The priority Kant assigns to outer sense as a condition for inner sense is in keeping with the All-or-Nothing reading of the Analytic developed above. Kant's point is not that we have determinate inner experience that (unfortunately) is fleeting and incapable of sustaining the notion of permanence and that we have therefore to add something to determinate inner experience. Rather, he is claiming, (inner) "experience in general" provides an insufficient ground for determinate inner content.

Judgement and Appearances Hence his claim that outer sense is 'bound up with ... of inner sense'. This is in keeping with his attack on the Cartesian epistemic framework in which content is prioritized over reference. The fourth sentence reinforces the view that permanence relates to an independent, external domain. Although Kant does not adopt the language of intentionality;,~is point is expressible in the modern vocabulary as a claim abou~ the necessity of reference as the ground for determinate mental content: perception demands 'a thing olltside me and not ... the mere representation of a thing outside me'. This is not a bald assertion. It rests on the results already established in the Analogies. It is a statement affirming the role of unity in the ontologically independent realm of appearances as the objective condition for inner representation: Objective significance cannot consist in the relation to another representation ... for that would simply raise anew the question: How does this representation in turn go beyond itself and acquire objective significance ... If we investigate what new characteristic is given to our representations by the relation to an object, and what is the dignity that they thereby receive, we find that it does nothing beyond making the combination of representations necessary in a certain way, and subjecting them to a rule. .. (B242)

We have seen already, in the Analogies, how the notions of rule-governedness operate within the manifold of the represented as a condition for the emergence of determinate content and temporal structure. Unity-in-the-object is the material expression of this logical requirement. The fifth sentence returns to the initial claim that consciousness of one's place in time therefore presupposes the 'existence of real things external to me' as its condition. The concluding sentence (6) restates the theorem and ties the consciousness of one's existence to the immediate consciousness 'of the existence of other things without me'. In this way, reference to an independently existing world is built into the empirical consciousness of determinate inner sense.

Judgement and Appearances 3.2.2. The Nature of the Problem I have suggested that Kant's attack on empirical idealism offers few arguments not already explicitly or implicitly present in the Analogies. 38 What is original is the explicit mobilization of the force of the judgement-dominated aspects of Kant's new model of cognition against the perennial problems associated with the pre-critical model. Kant's arguments thus weigh in against problems associated with modelling the cognitive relation of mind and world in terms of an insulated, and yet informative, inner domain from which we make inferences to an objective world of objects and events. The mediated relation that ensues between mind and world gives birth to the problems associated with radical scepticism. As we have seen, Kant argues that the holistic constraints and structures enforced by the manifold of appearance (the things represented) act as the conditions for the possibility of determinate inner representations. The empirical idealist project is thus turned on its head: Idealism [material] assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and that from that outer things could only be inferred, but, as in any case in which one infers from given effects to determinate causes, only Ltnreliably ... Yet here it is proved that outer experience is really immediate, that only by means of it is [inner experience1possible ... so that inner experience itself is consequently only mediate and possible only through outer experience. (B277)

This passage is perhaps the dearest expression of the Kantian attack on the pre-critical framework. Here Kant explicitly draws attention to how the shift of epistemic paradigms reverses the 38 Not surprisingly, many standard attacks on the viability of Kant's Refutation tend to be merely restatements of problems identified in the Analogies. For example, Wilkerson's criticism of the Analogies as being insufficient for (what he sees as) its goal of providing the basis for measuring temporal intervals is carried over in his assault on the viability of the Refutation. He suggests that 'the general claim that experience must be of external things is interwoven with a problem about the measurement of time' (Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, p. 82). This family of empiricist objections has already been addressed in the preceding section. I will not reintroduce them here.

Judgement and Appearances standard (Cartesian) interpretative of cognition. On the Kantian view, cognition and its object are immediately connected, and only through this relation is inner experience possible. Reference-to-an-object is not, as Hume believed, a derivative aspect of cognition that we naturally fall into 'whenever the mind follows its first and mbst\ natural tendency' .39 Sensations are not vehicles for truth-values, beliefs are. The judgment that we are experiencing a sensation is a belief whose determination is directly tied to the force of our other beliefs. There is no primitive point of epistemic contact between belief and sensation that could fulfil the kil~d of informative, evidential, and justificatory work that the empirical idealist appeal to sensation requires. Empirical realism, by contrast, requires that we include immediate reference to the world of objects and events in order to fix internal mental content. Accordingly, the argument in the Refutation against Cartesian (problematic) idealism is intended, simultaneously, to dose the door on scepticism. The mediate connection between belief and reality that idealism affirms by granting an epistemic role to sensation necessarily opens an unbridgeable gap between what we directly experience (putative sensations) and the objects of empirical reality. Empirical realism precludes the possibility of radical scepticism, not by finding a clever way of swearing epistemic intermediaries to truth, but rather by repudiating the "pre-theoretic" epistemic framework that gives rise to the perceived need. 40 The difficulty with the Kantian reversal of the empirical idealist epistemic model is that it seems to sanction the implausible view that all belief is veridical. If all belief demands reference to external objects as a condition of representation, then de facto all belief must connect with reality. If a truth-structure is necessary for particular reference assignments, and if objective reference is a precondition for determinate representation, then how can we entertain the idea that some judgements (false judgements) have no genuine referent? Conversely, if we allow for referential failure, we seem to jettison the connection between Hume, Treatise, bk. 1, part IV, sect. II. I am paraphrasing Davidson's well-known attack. See Davidson, 'A Coherence Theory', 312. 39 40

Judgement and Appearances

r93

inner content, reference, and truth that the Priority-ofJudgement interpretation requires. This is a serious dilemma. 4l

3.2.3. The Kantian Response to the Problem of Error

There are two distinct concerns that are relevant to the Priorityof-Judgement interpretation of Kant's treatment of error: (r) if reference and truth are requirements for determinate representation, then what is the status of beliefs that are erroneous, and (2) how do we distinguish false representations from veridical judgements? The answer to the latter question was introduced in Chapter 2. Individual errors are identified against the backdrop of the collective force of our beliefs. As Kant suggests in the Prolegomena: the difference between truth and dreaming is not ascertained by the nature of the representations which are referred to objects (for they are the same in both cases), but by their connection according to those rules which determine the coherence of the representations in the concept of an object, and by ascertaining whether they can subsist together in e"perience or not. (Prol. 290)42

l

:1r

r

The determination of true and false belief in experience is thus connected to the coherence of our representations. We distinguish the real from the imaginary where 'perception connects 41 The nature of false judgement has been a perplexing problem from the time of the Theaetetus up to the present. A complete account of Kant's treatment of error demands an investigation into his claim that error arises when the 'subjective grounds of the judgment join with the objective ones' (B35T). In this discussion, Kant, at times, is guilty of reverting to a pre-critical standpoint (see B35I ff.). In the reconstruction offered below, I have attempted to highlight those aspects that conform to the critical thrust of the Copernican view generally. 42 Kant's claim that veridical and non-veridical representations are "the same" qua representational content, I think, should be read as affirming the common point that, when dreams are suitably coherent, we can be fooled into thinking that our thoughts have objective bearing. J read the qualifying claim as drawing our attention to the fact that our capacit}' to distinguish veridical perception from dream states is rooted in our ability to recognize, upon reflection, the lack of a real identity in content owing to a difference in the general truth-structure that is deployed in the two cases. Read in this way, the representational content only appears to be "the same".

194

Judgement and Ap1)earances

up with all others in accordance with the rules of the unity of experience' (BS23). Those individual beliefs that fail to "subsist together" under one, all-embracing truth-structure also fail to meet the bare requirement necessary for the affirmation of all real objects of experience. As Kant suggests in the Refutation, 'whether this or that putative experience i'sn,ot merely imagination must be ascertained according to its pahicular determinations and through its coherence with the criteria of all actual experience' (B278-9). As discussed in Chapter I, the empirical realist posItIOn involves a coherence component. The identification of error is thus fairly sttaightforward and un controversiaL The former question poses a more interesting challenge. Errors, as introduced in Chapter 2, are the product of judgement, not sensation. A "false" sensation is a belief judged to be erroneous, not a self-given material error. This general principle applies equally to beliefs about internal states as it does to beliefs about external objects. The statements "I believe 1 am currently experiencing a red sensation" and "I believe I am seeing a red rose" are both the products of judgement, and therefore equally entail the holistic, object-involving conditions of judgement. If objective considerations of reference and truth are necessary in the way suggested, then how are we to account for those beliefs that, upon reflection, are judged false? Kant offers an all-too-brief response to this question in the Refutation. He suggests that error can be accounted for on the basis of the reproduction of previous representations: From the fact that the existence of outer objects is required for the possibility of a determinate consciousness ... it does not follow that every intuitive representation of outer things includes at the same time their existence, for that may well be the mere effect of the imagination (in dreams as well as delusions); but this is possible merely through the reproduction of previous outer perceptions, which, as has been shown, are possible only through the actuality of outer objects. (B278)

Unfortunately this response seems merely to push the challenge back a stage. If referential failure is accommodated by appealing to previous representations, then how do we account

Judgement and Appearances

I95

for possible failu.res at this level? Unless previous representations are, somehow, miraculously free of error, the problem seems to resurface. To avoid an infinite regress, it seems that Kant must admit, at some stage, that mental content can be given without considerations of reference and truth. This interpretative problem can be overcome if we resist the temptation to construe the notion of reproduction in empirical idealist terms. Kant is not adopting the view of representation that begins with self-given content that is amenable to manipulation, varied combination, and recollection, as we find, for example, in Hume's notion of complex ideas. In the Kantian system, if content is to be reproduced, so too must the implicit truth-structure that originally gave birth to it. Memory is not a kind of electronic filing system in which mental content is retrieved independently of the conditions of its original emergence. 43 Memory representations are as truth-constrained as all other beliefs.44 If we·refrain from thinking of the "reproduction" of content in terms of a retrieval of a dead perceptual file, we can incorporate the Kantian appeal to the reproduction model without reintroducing the infinite regress problem. The important move involves a recognition that our individual perceptual errors emerge from within a background of uniform perceptual contexts. All judgements, true or false, operate within a truthconstrained context. Consider, for example, the false belief that we are looking at the family pet from across a field. We think we see the cat, but, as we get nearer, we realize that it's not the cat but the neighbour's dog. No doubt, the error is in part a reproduction of content from a previous experience. We have seen the cat many times before and we are expecting to see it again. The original judgement thus involves, as Kant suggests, the reproduction of 43 Nagel develops a good reading of Kant's embryonic account of memory in The Structure of ExpeTience, ch. 8. My only concern with Nagel's reconstruction is that it seems implicitly to endorse an atomistic characterization of mental content. 44 I profess that this interptetation of memory takes llS somewhat beyond what Kant actually provides in the text. If there is one fault with the Critique, it is Kant's general neglect of the role of memory in the processes of representation.

Judgement and Appearances previous external perceptions. But what is in fact reproduced is not a stored content, but a set of discriminatory capacities necessary for the representation of a cat. The error occurs because of the virtually matching perceptual contexts-not contents. The truth-conditions for the determination of the belief "we are seeing the cat" very nearly harmonize with t):te overall truthstructure deployed in our second look when wd realize that it is not the cat but a dog. We identify the error because, as the perceptual context alters (the animal gets nearer), the belief that it is the cat cannot be integrated with the new beliefs (the animal is wagging its tail, urinating on the fire-hydrant, and so on). The coherence of belief and the truth-structures that individuate beliefs are central to this process. The rejection of the causal theory of perception in favour of the priority-of-judgement and its conditions, as discussed in Chapter 2, lies at the heart of this interpretation of error. There simply are, as Hyman suggests, no purely private 'mental episodes which can be conceptually skimmed off the life of a sentient creatllre'45 independent of the holistic truth-structures necessary for representation. The content of our experience is in this way more than an aggregate of causal "inputs", or purely internal stored contents. Content is not sequestered from the conceptual conditions that underwrite the bearing of thought on the world. In response, therefore, to the question concerning the status of beliefs that are erroneous, we can say that their content emerges on the borrowed epistemic capital of veridical belief.46 The COl1Hyman, 'The Causal Theory', 290. In the Woodbridge Lectures, McDowell offers an account of intentionality that exploits the Kantian notion that 'we can take perceived objects themselves to supply the external constraint on conceptual goings-on .. .' (p. 489). He suggests that one can usefully employ the Kantian idea that "an understanding of thought's having objective purport ... centers on the immediate presentness of objects to conceptual consciousness in intuition' (p. 488). Although late to the game given his quite different account of the Kantian role of intuition in Mind and World, in his more recent work McDowell offers an engaging introductory treatment of the Kantian account of reference: introductory only in the sense that McDowell develops his view largely in the shadow of his negative arguments against aspects of Sellar's programme. Nonetheless, on the specific issue concerning the difficult case of false judgement (referential failure), McDowell's approach sanctions a counter-intuitive result. At the core of his position in this lecture is the claim that 'this is just what the immediacy of intuition comes to: if there can be conceptual shapings 45 46

Judgement and AptJearances

I97

dition for the determination of the content of representations that are, on reflection, judged to be false belongs to the original truth-constrained perceptual context. False judgments arise in perceptual contexts that pertain, in the main, to veridical perception. This approach to the problem of error is consistent with the holistic character of belief endorsed by the Priority-ofJudgement interpretation. While reference is required for empirical content, it is the unity of the objective manifold as a whole (general truth-structure) that makes reference to particular objects possible. Objects are not given one-by-one as selfsufficient things-in-themselves, but are represented by means of the perceptual context of powers and capacities ascribed to the objective field of possible experiences: 'objects of experience, then, are l1ever given in themselves, but only in experience, and they do not exist at all outside it' (B 521). Standardly, these implicit truth-condition contexts are really no more than background conditions-conditions that are mundane in the extreme-which, once fixed, allow us to represent those aspects of reality that interest us. We become aware of these spontaneously deployed truth-considerations only in situations where relatively similar perceptual contexts introduce ambiguous representational assignments. 47 of sensory consciousness in which objects are immediately present to subjects, then illusions that objects are present to one in that way, which obviously can happen, are at the same time illusions about the contents of one's conceptually shaped consciousness' (p. 476). It is difficult to know how correctly to interpret the notion of "illusions about the contents", without getting into trouble, since such contents are already, as McDowell recognizes, the deliverance of actualized conceptual capacities imbued with world-involving considerations. 47 Rubin's well-known "ambiguous figure" is a good example of this type of competing interpretation. The cognitive processes that operate in the original discrimination of the object, two faces in one case, a vase in the other, reveal how important the contextual frame is for object identification. Similar examples are provided by depth clue errors. The Necker cube is a famous example. Again, competing perceptual frames of reference deliver different objects of perception. As previously mentioned, the Gestalt school of cognitive psychology is rich in these types of Kantian examples. For a good general introduction to contemporary accounts of perception in empirical psychology see D. McBurney and V. Collings, Introduction to Sensation/Perception, 2nd edition, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984). For a good recent attempt to connect philosophical and psychological themes, see B. Baars, In the Theatre of Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Judgement and Appearances The judgement-oriented approach to error reinforces the separation of Kant's analysis from the empiricist formulation. Error is not the (somehow) incorrect mirroring of content registered in a primitive stimulus. Although offered in the context of distinguishing empirical illusion from transcendental illusion, Kant's observation that the moon seems larger'\t the horizon (B354) is a good example for recognizing how mdeh more than the mirroring of retinal images there is in the content of perceptual judgements. The visual effect Kant refers to has been known since antiquity. When the moon is at the horizon, it appears significantly larger than when it is at its zenith in the midnight sky. The effect is even more pronounced if the horizon is uncluttered (over an open prairie or a large body of water). The moon appears to be so large that one could, with a sketch pad and pen in hand, easily map the contours of the moon under these viewing conditions. Why does this happen, given that the retinal image in both cases (moon at the horizon or at its zenith) is the same size? Although there continues to be some dispute over the issue, the consensus emerging is that we see the moon as larger when it is on the horizon because we make a judgement about its relative distance from us that is different from the relative distance judgement we make when the moon is at its zenith. This discrepancy in the distance judgement, in addition to how we correlate light intensity and angle of perception with apparent distance, creates the illusion that the moon is much larger when at the horizon. The judgements at work are spontaneous and are object involving-invoking distance cues for the purposes of determining perceptual content. We do not see the retinal image. We see the moon looming large on the horizon. In this case the error is the result of incomplete information. If our low-level spontaneous judgements could deliver the distance cues correctly, the illusion would disappear. The notion of correctness is inherently object directed. Error is thus compatible with object reference relations: it is the result of incomplete information. 48 48 As introduced in Chapter 2, there is a related, and more difficult, problem concerning how to explain the phenomena of perceptual illusions that are immune from concept-deploying correction (i.e. Muller-Lyer illusion). These cases seem to point to the involvement of non-conceptual content. Although

Judgement and Appearances

199

This way of interpreting the problem of. error sustains the view that reference and truth are conditions for the possibility of representation, while avoiding the untenable view that all referential judgements would therefore have to be veridical. 49 But this approach to the problem of accounting for error also gives rise to the urgency of the challenge posed by radical scepticism. Might it not be the case that all our beliefs cohere under a single truth-structure and yet fail to refer to anything outside the mind?50

3.2.4. The Kantian Response to Scepticism: Contra the Hyper-

Sceptic A brief examination of Allison's treatment of this issue is instructive. Allison divides the Kantian response into two possible arguments. The first interpretation turns on the nature of outer sense. The premiss of the argument involves Kant's claim that outer sense is already a relation to 'the existence of actual things that I perceive outside myself' (B27S). Thus, if it can be established that the belief in the reality of outer sense is veridical (not merely imagined), then the sceptical challenge can be rebuffed. Kant's assertion that 'For even merely to imagine an outer sense computational, modular accounts are currently the preferred way of explaining this phenomenon, there remains open the possibility that Gestalt accounts that invoke holistic spatial relationships, or Gibsonian accounts that detail incomplete spatial affordances, may also prove successful. Each of the latter build on the Kantian theme that the spatial mode of presentation (form of intuition) is a primitive, formal feature in any visual experience. If, as Kant suggests, form precedes content, then we may he able to account for the cognitive impenetrability of these illusions on the basis of the primitive mode of presentation (space), without the need to appeal to content that is informative, but non-conceptual. See Nagel, The Structure of Experience, ch. 2 for a powerful account of Kant's treatment of the primitive character of spatial relations. 49 Gibson offers a similar type of response in his account of error. Gibson suggests that errors in information pick-up of the optical array should be cashed out in terms of incomplete pick-up. Error is thus a 'a matter of failure to pick up all the available information, the inexhaustible reservoir that lies open to further scrutiny', The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, 243. 50 As discussed in Chapter I, some commentators go so far as to claim that all our empirical beliefs are ill fact false. See Walker, 'Empirical Realism', r61.

200

Judgement and Appearances

would itself annihilate the faculty of intuition, which is to be determined through the imagination' (B277, footnote) is intended to reaffirm the impossibility of a merely imagined outer sense. This impossibility thereby forestalls the last impediment'to establishing the reality of 'something actual outside me'. ~-" Allison rejects this argument. He claims that 'tl~ere is simply no reason for the skeptic to accept these claims'. 51 He suggests that Kant's 'contention that we could not even imagine or dream about outer objects unless we [really] had an outer sense is similar to one which Descartes himself entertains and rejects in the First Meditation'.52 There seems, contrary to Kant's bare assertion, no reason in principle why we cannot view our representation of an external sense as merely imagined. Kant offers no reasons in the Refutation why the faculty of intuition would be annihilated if this were the case. The second way of constructing Kant's response identifies the main argument with the claim that 'the consciousness of one's existence as determined in time is a genuine bit of empirical knowledge ... '53 Allison explicitly connects the possibility of knowledge of the self in time with Kant's idea of determinate inner experience: 'I am conscious of my existence as determined in time, or equivalently, that I have inner experience.'54 As the sceptic does not deny the 'reality of inner experience, it follows that he cannot doubt the reality of whatever can be shown to be a necessary condition of the possibility of this experience'.ss Kant has shown in the Analogies that the constraint afforded by the structure of an ontologically independent realm (the empirical world) is necessary for determinate inner experience. The reality of outer sense is thus established. Allison therefore asserts that the central message of the Refutation is that one cannot 'assume the reality of inner experience and doubt that of outer experience'. 56 Allison accepts this as a 'significant result' but claims that it is 'somewhat less than one might hope for from an argument that is designed to remove the "scandal to philosophy'" posed by 5J 53

Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 30I--2. Ibid. 302. S4 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 303.

52

S6

Ibid. 30 1. Ibid. 304.

Judgement and Appearances

201

scepticism. 57 He suggests that, while this conclusion successfully silences the Cartesian sceptic, it remains vulnerable to the "hyper-scepticism" of a Humean challenge. Recall that the Cartesian doubts the existence of external reality but accepts the reality of the self. The hyper-sceptic not merely doubts 'the reality of outer experience ... [but also] raisers] similar doubts about the whole sphere of inner experience and selfknowledge'.5s Consequently, Kant's (alleged) commitment to the undefined claim that we have veridical knowledge of the self appears to nullify the results of the anti-sceptical argument. Allison thus rejects this reconstruction of Kant's argument. 59 The conclusion of the second interpretation, that one 'cannot assume the reality of inner experience and doubt that of outer experience', is precisely the conclusion, I believe, Kant intends. I thus agree with Allison's second description of Kant's argument. However, I believe Allison's worry about the vulnerability of Kantian "inner experience and self-knowledge" to the hypersceptic is motivated by the following misunderstanding. The analysis offered in the Analogies, as we have seen, cements the claim that inner experience is possible 'only through outer experience in general' (B278). The Refutation builds on the arguments of the Analogies, affirming, contrary to the sceptic, that we, as Allison suggests, 'cannot doubt the reality of whatever can be shown to be a necessary condition of the possibility of this experience'.6o Since we have awareness of inner experience, there must then be ontologically independent objects. Allison's rejection of this interpretation of Kant's position is the product, I believe, of a self-imposed worry. He suggests that, since the Humean sceptic denies even the reality of the self, Ibid. 305. 58 Ibid. 304. Allison develops his own examination of the issue with an argument that centres on considerations of the unity of apperception and the ownership of mental states, which I shall not explore (see ibid. 304-9). My worry with Allison's reconstruction of the argument is the priority he attaches to identity conditions as the basis for deflecting the sceptical charge. I agree with Allison's general claim-that we cannot doubt 'the ownership of mental states' past or present {po 308)~but I think that that is too dull a sword to defeat the sceptic. The argument is less about the empirical consciollsness of the self in time, and more about the determinacy of self-consciousness in time generally. 60 Ibid. 304. 57

59

202

Judgement and Appearances

Kant's argument, without something else added, fails. Kant begins (it seems) with a commitment to the veridical character of self-knowledge. And this commitment is, of course, vulnerable to the radical challenge posed by the Humean denial of the self. In what follows, I do not pretend to proviqe an unimpeachable defence of Kant's argument. My main interbst is to show how, if we remain within the Priority-of-Judgement view, the realistic character of Kant's treatment effectively deflects the hypersceptic's charge. I suggest, in this context, that the alleged vulnerability of Kant's analysis to tl:ie hyper-sceptic's challenge is based on a common, but ultimately misleading, Cartesianinspired interpretation of Kant's argument. Allison's mistake is the identification of inner experience with knowledge that relates exclusively to the self. The confusion stems from equating the determination of inner sense with the determination of the self: what Allison calls the "genuine bit of empirical knowledge [of the self]'.61 Allison casually links the two. He introduces the problem posed by the hyper-sceptic by suggesting that she doubts 'the whole sphere of inner experience and self-knowledge'.62 Since inner experience and actual knowledge of the self are viewed as equivalent expressions, the hypersceptic's denial of the reality of the self, and therefore the possibility of knowledge of the self, would seem to block the affirmation of the reality of inner sense, and therefore block the assertion of the reality of outer sense. But determinate "inner experience" and "self-knowledge" are not equivalent expressions. Knowledge of the self as an empirical object63 does not pertain to inner experience in any unique way. Inner experience relates to the whole domain of objective knowledge. The focus Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 302. 62 Ibid. 304. Despite Allison's claim that the "genuine bit of empirical knowledge" is the 'consciousness of one's existence as determined in time' (ibid. 302.), Kant makes it abundantly dear that it is not consciousness of the self per se that is the basis for the proof, but consciousness of the determinate order of inner experience (which requires objects, one of which is the empirical self). Consider: 'Yet here it is proved that outer experience is really immediate, that only by means of it is possible not, to be sure, the consciousness of our own existence, but its determination in time, i.e., inner experience' (B276/). 61

63

Judgement and Appearances

J

I

20 3

of Kant's arguments in the Analogies supports the view that our ability to be conscious of a determinate order in apprehension requires the objective constraints enforced by the entire structure of the represented (manifold of appearances). The discrimination of events and objects cannot proceed on the basis of the cognitive contribution of inner synthesis alone. Apprehension, as we have seen, is intrinsically underdetermined. The hyper-sceptic, even Hume, does not deny the determinacy of inner experience. She does not oppose the genuine presence of ideas in inner sense, or that these ideas are revealed in the determinate successive order in apprehension. If she did, there would be nothing to be sceptical about. There would be no inner content at all. On the contrary, she asserts the primacy of given empirical content, deconstructing even the notion of the empirical self in favour of these primitively given ideas. What the hyper-sceptic does doubt is the reality of the empirical objects, including the self, that these ideas represent. Kant's arguments, as we have seen, are designed to undermine the notion of content without objective reference. Kant's point, as Allison suggests elsewhere, is that 'there is no purely inner experience'.64 Determinate inner content requires the structure of the independent realm of appearances: receptivity reaches all the way out to the world of objects. Consequently, the hypersceptic's attack on the notion of the self does not unhinge the Kantian response in the way Allison's reconstruction suggests. It is merely a hangover of Cartesian methodology that Kant's argument in the Refutation is interpreted in terms of some kind of indubitable "bit of knowledge" about the self that is then used as a foundational support for the reality of empirical reference. Kant's argument, I believe, is more penetrating. He is not employing the Cartesian strategy of beginning with a special object of knowledge (the self) and ending (hopefully) with the reality of outer objects. The reversal of the basic Cartesian epistemic model of cognition entails a rejection of the Cartesian self-to-object pattern of proof for the existence of external reality. Kant argues from fact of our consciousness of temporally determinate experience to the conditions of 'this 64

Ibid. 304, emphasis added.

-Judgement and Appearances time-determination .. .' (B276). If we accept the priority Kant assigns to judgement and its object-involving conditions as the fundamental basis for all representation, then, as determinate inner experience requires the 'immediate consciousness of the existence of outer things' (B276, footnote), the hyper-sceptic's challenge fails in the same way as the Cartesian-sfeptic's. Since Kant denies that our knowledge of the empirical world derives from neutral inner content, there is no room for the sceptic of either persuasion. The denial of the consciousness of inner content without the objective structure of the represented precludes the possibility of radical referential failure, whether of the empirical self or of any other object. Receptivity does not end at our fingertips. We directly experience objects and events through our sensory mode of representation, not from self-given sensations. The Cartesian sceptic and the Humean sceptic share the same basic empirical idealist epistemic model of cognition; they both prioritize content over reference. It is not unexpected, therefore, that, if we interpret the Kantian analysis as an attack on this precritical image, we should also find that both forms of scepticism fail in the same way. The new epistemic paradigm announced by the priority assigned to judgement and its object-involving conditions leaves no room for the kind of self-interpreted material error that the Cartesian and Humean sceptics introduce. Descartes's truly admirable thought experiment, that 'all external things ... [may be] only illusions and deceptions' is carried on the shoulders of the transcendental realist epistemic edifice. Without the epistemic commitment to the idea that inner content can emerge independent of judgement and the holistic conditions of truth and reference, the Cartesian evil genius has no epistemic intermediaries to seduce. In an important and somewhat neglected passage in the Third Meditation, Descartes comes close to this realization himself: 'For, although I observed ... that it is only in judgements that 65 Rene Descartes, 'Meditation on the First Philosophy in which the Existence of God and the Real Distinetion betweel1 the Soul and the Body of Man are Demonstrated', in Discourse on Method and the Meditations, trans. F. Sutcliffe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986), (First Meditation), 100.

Judgement and Appearances

20 5

proper formal f::tlsity can be met with, nevertheless a certain material falsity can be found in the ideas, when they represent what is nothing as if it were something' (emphasis added).66 The idea of a "certain material falsity" independent of the object-involving conditions of judgement is nonsense. Descartes very nearly recognizes this. He introduces the (central) idea of material falsity notwithstanding the tension that it creates with his earlier claim that truth and falsity belong properly only to judgements. What holds Descartes's view together is the precritical "common prejudice" that mandates the possibility of inner content independent of considerations of truth and reference. Kant, on the Priority-of-Judegment interpretation, rejects both sides of the transcendental realist image. The idea of empirical reality independent of the conditions of judgement is rejected as an artefact of the rationalist theory of mind that privileges ontological commitment over epistemic resources. Equally, the commitment to the idea of given inner content independent of the structure of interpretation (empirical idealism) is rejected as nothing more than an artefact of the pre-critical model. For Kant, the two-headed monster of transcendental realism/empirical idealism is replaced with the twin commitments to: (r) articulating ontological commitment in the wake of the conditions of the possibility of experience, and (2) rejecting a role for perceptual content independent of objective reference relations.

3.2.5. Is Global.Scepticism Possible? Despite this rejection of the sceptic's position, one might still wonder whether it might not be the case that we can accept the priority Kant assigns to judgement, and still be troubled by the evil demon objection in another way. For example, can we entertain the sceptical possibility that the general truth-structure necessary for judgement could be false itself? As already discussed in connection to the possibility of error, empirical realism does not preclude the possibility that the 66

Ibid. (Third Meditation), 122.

206

Judgement and Appearances

system of representation can, in local cases, lead to false judgements. Individual perceptual errors, and more extended errors of representation as in the case of dreams, illustrate clearly that we can, and often do, judge previous representations, and the objective conditions that give rise to them, as false. The fundamental problem with the idea that the global goyyrning structure of representation could be false is that the notion of "falsity" is vacuous when used in this manner. What is the general truth-structure false with respect to? It cannot be reality interpreted in terms that are radically independent of the conditions of experience. That would signal a return to transcendental realism: the domain of truth extending beyond the field of possible experience. Neither can it be viewed as false in terms of a primitive "disagreement" between what I believe 1 am experiencing and the actual sensations I "truly" am experiencing. Sensations have no epistemic role independent of the belief that we are having particular sensory experiences. This view, therefore, also belongs to the transcendental rea1ist framework. It asserts the presence of mental content that stands outside the activity of judgement. Perhaps we can make sense of the charge by thinking of "false" in the context of subsequent judgement. We view the truth-structure as being false from the perspective of a different interpretation. It is rather like thinking of a dream from which we never wake, but, from the perspective of a non-dreamer, could be judged as false . . The difficulty with this description of the problem is that the (alleged) possibility of representing an alternative (but false) representation of reality requires a high degree of shared background beliefs that are held to be true in both models. We judge, for example, our dreams to be false representations of reality on the basis of the enormous background of common belief that even the strangest dream shares with the most vivid veridical perceptual contexts. This is why in the previous section it was suggested that the mental content that emerges in false judgements is essentially representational capital borrowed from the set of beliefs held true. As is the case with the role of radical interpretation in the philosophy of language, the problem of incommensurability is not, as is sometimes thought, a problem

Judgement and Appearances

207

about how, given widely divergent ontological commitments, we establish (or fail to establish) an adequate, truth-preserving translation between discourses. 67 The real problem, I believe, concerns how we could ever view a radically incompatible field of representation as an alternative representation of reality given a complete disparity between the truth-conditions that serve to fix the interpretative process. As Hacking suggests in the context of the philosophy of language: For how are we to say that speakers of L ha ve a scheme different from we who speak M? We must first pick out the true sentences from the core of the scheme of L and show that many of these translate into sentences of M that we who speak M hold to be false. But what is to assure that this is the right translation ... Onee you focus on truth ... you begin a ehain of considerations that call into question the very idea of a conceptual scheme. 6S

The sceptic builds essentially on the intuition that, as we are wrong about some things, perhaps we could be wrong about everything. But, when we rule out the conception of error as interpreted according to the transcendental realist model, and adopt instead the priority assigned to judgement, we find that the logically po~sible extension of error fails to meet the real objective conditions of judgement necessary for determinate representation (true or false). Individual beliefs can be regarded as false against the backdrop of our other beliefs held true. Falsity thus emerges in the context of our experiential judgements, not in mental content (somehow) insulated from the conditions of judgement. In summary, I suggest that the very idea of entertaining an entirely false representational scheme is of dubious merit once the Cartesian "common prejudice" is replaced with the fundamental role of judgement and its objective conditions. The primitive correspondence relation between thought and reality-what Kant calls the immediate (unmittelbar) role of 67 The views of T. Kuhn and P. Feyel'abend are good examples. They believe that we begin with recognized alternative discourses. The problem, as they describe it, centres on the lack of sufficient common reference for truthpreserving translation. 68 Ian Hacking, 'Language, Truth and Reason', in M. Hollis and S. Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I982), 58--9.

208

Judgement and Appearances

external sense~that lies at the heart of Kant's account of determinate representation effectively blocks the global sceptical challenge. Representation is secured in the context of judgement. This requires an abiding unity in the field of the represented: the synthetic unity of appeal'llnCeS denotes 'one experience in which all perceptions are represented as in thoroughgoing and lawlike connection .. .' (AIIO).69 In abandoning the Cartesian epistemic model of cognition, we also relinquish the intelligibility of the idea that we could deploy a truthstructure and that referential failure might still ensue. The critical thrust of Kant's argument in the Refutation of Idealism against scepticism centres, therefore, on the claim that, while error can be identified at the margins, the possibility that all or most of our beliefs might be false is, on the grounds of the possibility of representation, inherently unintelligible. The coherence of belief furnishes us a method for identifying error. And the demand for a primitive correspondence between thought and reality as a condition of determinate representation precludes the possibility of radical referential failure. It is this strong, conditions-of-representation reading, motivated by considerations of reference and truth, that simultaneously drives the attack on idealism and the anti-sceptical conclusion of the Refutation. The case against scepticism, and the epistemic framework that gives rise to it, is sustained by the entire edifice of Kant's account of representation developed in the Analytic.

3.2.6. The Realism of the Analytic: The Land of Truth The above interpretation of the Analogies and Refutation of Idealism completes om discussion of the robust realist character of empirical realism as discussed in the Analytic. The Analogies provide the structure (temporal and causal) that makes event and object discrimination possible. The Refutation identifies 69 Although I will not pursue the point here, it is worth noting that this way of interpreting the case against scepticism offers a powerful method for blocking the slide into ontological relativism that infects many neo-Kantian approaches.

Judgement and Appearances

209

empirical idealism as the epistemic basis for scepticism. Both sections make explicit the priority Kant assigns to the independent manifold of appearance as a fundamental condition for determinate inner content. This primitive correspondence between thought and the world serves to reaffirm the realist credentials of empirical realism. Knowledge is of an independent world not of our own making. On the strength of the Priorityof-Judgement interpretation developed above, truth is a primitive concept for Kant, mandated from the start as a condition for determinate inner content. This is consistent with Kant's reversal of the epistemic framework; replacing the inside-outside account of pre-critical epistemology with an interpretation that favours the inclusion of objective features as the basis for "subjective" representation: receptivity is object-involving. Kant thus describes the world of appearances as 'the.Iand of truth' (B29S). Having completed our discussion of Kant's account of spontaneous representation, we are now in a position to review the progress that has been made towards establishing the five principles of empirical realism outlined in Chapter 1. The fi",e principles, once again, are:

Principle of Representation. All representation of objects relates directly to the activity of judgement. 2. Principle of Experience. Experience is directed, and restricted, to an inherently structured causal world. 3. Principle of Empirical Knowledge. Knowledge pertains exclusively to experience and its possible adva;nce. 4. Principle of the Systematicity of Nature. The inherent and systematic causal relations of the world can transcend our idiosyncratic experience of them. 5. Anti-Scepticism Principle. The collective force of our beliefs about the empirical world cannot be radically false. 1.

The priority Kant attaches to the role of judgement sustains the Principle of Representation. Kant's repudiation of the transcendental realist/empirical idealist framework centres on a renunciation ~of Cartesian-dominated epistemology: the "common-prejudice" of pre-critical epistemology. Empiricism and rationalism share a basic commitment to this epistemic paradigm. The Priority-of-Judgement approach shatters the standard

2IO

Judgement and Appearances

dualisms that assign a privileged place to inner, private experience over outer sense. The content of belief, Kant maintains, cannot be given without the involvement of the holistic constraints of the manifold of appearance itself. We cognize objects on the condition that such objects stand in a complete connection with 'all others in accordance with the rules of th~ unity of experience' (B5 2 3)·

The "competing" epistemic humanist and ultimate realist interpretations were shown to share a deep commitment to the empirical idealist framework. Their joint anti-realist interpretation of empirical realism was traced ·back °to a failure to appreciate fully the epistemic ramification of the priority Kant assigns to judgement. The analysis in Chapter 3 secures the Principle of Experience. Our ability to deploy the experiential concept of an event or object presupposes an intrinsic temporal and causal nexus in the manifold of appearance itself. The regulative principles of the understanding collectively express the conceptual and temporal structures necessary for objective representation. The central task of the Analogies is to secure the objective structure of the manifold of appearances, and thus to make representation possible. The requirement of an intrinsic, causal nexus in the manifold of appearance is the general condition necessary for the discrimination of events and objects. Without this determinate structure in the manifold of appearance, there is no answer to the problem of the underdetermination of intuition in cognition. Without unity-in-the-object, and the larger affinity of the manifold as a whole, 'nothing is distinguished from anything else' (B2 43)· The Principle of Empirical Knowledge (3) and the Principle of the Systematicity of Nature (4) have yet to be discussed directly. The attack on the viability of radical scepticism expressed by the fifth principle has been established in this section. We have seen how the repudiation of the intelligibility of a radical gulf between belief and the world follows directly from the Priorityof-Judgement interpretation of empirical realism. The renunciation of the role of the given in any form (transcendental matter, sensation), in favour of the holistic determination of belief, collapses the epistemic space between inner content and external

Judgement and Appearances

2II

objects. The Refutation of Idealism emphasizes how far removed from the "common prejudice" Kant's empirical realism actually is. Kant's radically different treatment of the structure of cognition-that we have immediate experience of independent objects and only mediate experience of inner contentthus exorcises the demon of radical scepticism that haunts the pre-critical epistemic paradigm. The interpretation developed thus far points to a robust form of realism. The objective world is not of our own making. It exists independently of our beliefs. Our relation to it is in terms of a primitive correspondence relation between mind and world. Considerations of truth figure as constitutive requirements for the possibility of reference, and therefore of experience in general. Nevertheless, on their own, Principles I, 2, and 5 constitute too slender a branch to support the strong realist interpretation. The integration of Principles 3 and 4 is crucial for broadening the material and scope for a compelling realist interpretation. The chief difficulty in incorporating these principles is that, on the surface at least, they seem to offer conflicting signals. Kant's c~aim that empirical knowledge is restricted to experience and its possible advance (Principle 3) was shown in Chapter I to encourage pragmatist and anti-realist interpretations. Stevenson suggests, for example, in tones reminiscent of the standard anti-realist renunciation of a recognition-transcendent conception of truth, that, for Kant, the 'objective validity which attaches to all judgements cannot be a correspondence between our judgements and some objects or states of affairs transcending our knowledge, it can only be the rule-governed nature of our thoughts or assertions'.7° Posy suggests that we should interpret 'Kant's idealism along the lines of a modern, non-reductive anti-realism'.71 Commenting on the role of the idea of viewing nature as a determinate totality, Kitcher recommends interpreting Kant as endorsing a 'methodological principle that we are justified in following' where justification 'does not rest on the correctness of Stevenson, 'Empirical Realism', I45. C. Posy, 'The Language of Appearances and Things in Themselves', Synthese, 4712 (I98I), 3I3. 70 71

212

Judgement and Appearances

Nature [a]s systematically unified'.72 We can add to this mix of pragmatist and anti-realist formulations Buchdahl's claim that we should treat totality as a meta-methodological precept,?3 and Guyer's recommendation that we treat the assumption of the transcendental principle of the systemath::ity of nature as a 'reasonable method for searching for the laws in the diversity of empirical intuition' These arguments build on Kant's requirement that knowledge cannot extend beyond the range of experience and its possible advance. Ti'uth is associated with assertion-conditions for warranted belief. In the anti-realist G:ase, Kant's appeal to the constraint inquiry imposes on our conceptions of truth and knowledge is interpreted in ways that exclude commitments that are recognition transcendent. The principle of bivalence, for example, is relinquished in the case of evidence-transcendent propositions. Pragmatism offers a similar interpretation, but with a liberalized conception of warranted assertibility. An identification of the above views with the Principle of Empirical Knowledge consequently appears tempting. It involves connecting Kant's experientially constrained conception of truth and knowledge with an assertion-condition approach to truth. In other words, it may seem appealing to link Kant's prohibition on interpreting the bounds of knowledge beyond possible experience with the pragmatist and anti-realist claim that the concepts of truth and knowledge are informed by the constraints of human inquiry. Against this interpretative stance stands the fourth principle. The intrinsic relations of the phenomenal world can transcend our capacities for recognizing such states. This principle operates directly against the force of the pragmatist and anti-realist interpretations. The fourth principle affirms a truth-condition interpretation of empirical knowledge, leaving open the possibility of recognition-transcendent facts. This constitutes an 72 Philip Kitcher, 'Projecting the Order of Nature', in R. Butts (ed.), Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science (Lancaster: Reidel & Dordrecht, 1986), 21I. 73 Gerd Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I969), 51:2.. 74 P. Guyer, 'Kant's Conception of Empirical Law: Part 1', Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 64 (I990), 22+

Judgement and Appearances

2I3

immediate chalknge to the cogency of the assertion-condition approach. The responsibility of reconciling the Principle of Empirical Knowledge and the Principle of the Systematicity of Nature falls to the remaining two chapters. The resolution of these features requires considerations drawn from Kant's treatment of reason in its reflective capacity in the Dialectic: the 'broad and stormy ocean' (B29S) beyond the land of truth. The challenge consists in developing the analysis in a way that accommodates the tie between knowledge and the constraints of possible experience, while still endorsing the view that the manifold of appearance has an intrinsic, independent structure connecting objects in determinate relations that exceed the merely idiosyncratic epistemic limit of human inquiry. It is therefore to judgement in its reflective capacity that I now turn in order to broaden and defend the realist interpretation.

4

Truth and the Constraint of Possible Experience what is required is only the progress from appearances to appearances, even if they should not yield any actual perception (if this perception is too weak in degree to become an experience for our consciousness), because despite this they would still belong to possible experience. (Kant)

4.0. INTRODUCTION As stated at the end of Chapter 3, the task ahead centres on how we integrate the Principle of Empirical Knowledge and the Principle of the Systematicity of Nature with the relevant portions of the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique. We have seen how a judgement-first interpretation of the Analytic of Principles allows us to make sense of Kant's empirical realist designation. In the Analytic, Kant offers his positive account of the conditions necessary for determinate representation. The following two chapters develop the realist interpretation in the context of the negative lessons of the Dialectic: explaining how we can integrate the claim (Principle 3) that empirical knowledge pertains to experience and its possible advance with the claim (Principle 4) that the intrinsic relations of the phenomenal world can transcend our experience of them. The Transcendental Dialectic portion of the Critique poses a potential obstacle to the realist interpretation. The elementary worry is that empirical realism as described up to this point may be vulnerable to Kant's own attacks on transcendental realism expressed most clearly in the Dialectic portion of the

Truth and Possible Experience

21 5

Critique. The chief task of the Dialectic is to delineate the legitimate boundary conditions for knowledge. We should thus expect that it is within the framework of the Dialectic that the empirical realist conception of truth, and the determinacy of nature, will be subjected to scrutiny. For example, we might find that the experientially located conception of truth Kant embraces in Principle 3 may be in conflict with the standard realist commitment to the possibility of empirical, recognitiontranscendent truths. Or we might find that the mere regulative status Kant attaches to the Principle of the· Systematicity of Nature is too slight to support the realist ontological commitment to the determinacy of nature. Principles 3 and 4 of my realist interpretation identify these cross-currents. Principle 3 is intended to capture Kant's claim that all knowledge is restricted to the framework of possible experience. We have no knowledge of things in themselves. Our knowledge is restricted to the manifold of appearances. Principle 4 claims that the reality of the intrinsic causal relations of the phenomenal world can transcend the idiosyncratic limits of what experience reveals. There are sentences within the framework of possible experience that have determinate truth values even though human inquiry may never converge on a determination of which value obtains. Nature's structure may therefore extend beyond what our experience of nature can ever reveal. The following two chapters are devoted to developing an interpretation of major themes in the Dialectic in conformity with these two principles. The task of reconciling these principles with the Dialectic will serve also to demonstrate how the realist reading brings together the central arguments of the two halves of the Critique under a single unified interpretation-a merit for any interpretation. The analysis will proceed along the following two lines. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to developing Kant's argument for a recognitiontranscendent conception of empirical truth. The task here is dominated by arguments that are intended to reveal why Kant's compelling attack on transcendental realism leaves realism at the empirical level untouched. I claim that the all-too-common move to affirm an anti-realist analysis of Kant's notion of

216

Truth and Possible Experience

"possible experience" involves conflating the negative lesson of transcendental limits with a (false) empirical claim about the constraints that operate within the legitimate field of possible experience. In Chapter 5 I examine the priorit:):' Kant assigns to the empirical employment of the transcendental idea of the systematicity of nature. Pragmatist and methodological interpretations that advance the heuristic interpretation of the regulative role of systematicity are currently popular.l These pose a serious obstacle for the realist interpretation. Liberating empirical realism from the grip of these interpretations is .required if the realist interpretation is to be sustained.

4.1. EPISTEMIC ELBOW ROOM Any undergraduate familiar with the Critique will point to the Antinomies as the clearest expression of Kant's attack on transcendental realism in the Dialectic. Each of the four Antinomies reveals Kant's attempt to locate the patterns of error that arise when transcendental realists advance claims that overstep the legitimate boundary conditions of empirical knowledge. Unfortunately, the lesson that tends to be taken away from the Antinomies, and the Dialectic as a whole, is that Kant rejects realism in toto. The seemingly non-realist ch~racter of the Antinomies promotes an anti-realist prejudice that customarily neuters empirical realism of its realist force. In order, therefore, to develop a realist response, it is necessary from the outset to confront this damagingly misleading interpretation of the central message of the Dialectic. An examination of the nature of Kant's attack on the transcendental realist framework in the Antinomies is therefore a required 1 Hans Vaihinger, The Philosophy of 'As if . . :, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), 27I-3I9, is an early example of the pragmatist/methodological interpretation. For more recent accounts, see Philip Kitcher, 'Projecting the Order of Nature', and 'The Unity of Science and the Unity of Nature', in Kant and Contemporary Epistemology (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), and R. Butts, 'The Methodological Structure of Kant's Metaphysics of Science', in Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science (London: University of Western Ontario, 1986).

Truth and Possible Experience

2I7

precursor for the discussion of the cogency of the realist truthcondition approach.

4-I.I. Targeting Transcendental Realism

All of the Antinomies follow the same basic pattern. Thesis and antithesis are presented as disjuncts that are mutually exclusive. The form of argument in each case is indirect. Thus to prove the truth of the thesis, we assume the truth of the antithesis and derive a contradiction. As the disjuncts in the pairing are mutually exclusive, disproving the requisite disjunct serves to affirm the desired thesis. To this we should add the background principle of bivalence. The thesis/antithesis pairing (A and not-A) frames the task of reason. As there are but two coordinate truth-values for any empirical proposition, reason is set the goal of determining which truth-value obtains. The trouble that emerges, on Kant's view, is that both thesis and antithesis can be affirmed with equal validity. The form of proof is indirect: we can prove the thesis by assuming the truth of the antithesis and deriving a contradiction, and we can prove the truth of the antithesis by affirming the truth of the thesis and finding a contradiction in it. Reason thus finds itself in antinomy, being able to affirm both A and not-A. We can use the First Antinomy as a vehicle for expressing the thrust of Kant's critique of transcendental realism as found in the Antinomies generally. The thesis and antithesis are as follows: (I) Thesis: 'The world has a beginning in time, and in space it is also enclosed in boundaries' (B454), (2) Antithesis: 'The world has no beginning and no bounds in space, but is infinite with regard to both time and space' (B45 5). The argument proceeds, in brief, as follows. The proof of the thesis advances on the basis of the opposing assumption that the world has no beginning in time. Since the world has no first time, the representation of any given time (the present moment, for example) must therefore involve the implicit representation of the completion of an infinite series of past states. It is as if one is standing on the rung of a ladder. If the ladder has no first rung, then you must have climbed an infinite number of rungs

218

Truth and Possible Experience

to get to your present position. But the completion of an infinite series generates a contradiction, since the concept of an infinite series is defined as a series without end: The true (transcendental) concept of infinity is that the successive synthesis of unity in the traversal of a quantum can never be completed. From this it follows with complete certainh that an eternity of actual states, each following upon another up to a given point in time (the present), cannot have passed away, and so the world must have a beginning. (B46o)

This contradiction in the antithesis thereby authorizes the acceptance of the truth of the thesis .. The proof for the antithesis follows the same pattern. It begins with the assumption that there is a first time. The concept of a beginning presupposes a prior determinate temporal location in which the world was not. A contradiction arises because 'no part of such a time has, in itself, prior to another part, any distinguishing condition of its existence rather than its non-existence (whether one assumes that it comes to be of itself or through another cause)' (B4S6). Kant's point is that an entirely empty time has no unique mode of connection to the empirical time series. It would be like trying to plant your ladder without the ground. There is no way of discriminating a first time because there is no way of representing a primitive temporal beginning in experience. The empirical regress from perception to perception admits of no experience of an absolute limit (B4S7). Kant thus asserts that it is impossible to represent a determinate temporal series in which the world can be thought to have begun without at the same time transgressing the conditions for valid representation. Therefore the world has no absolute beginning in time. The discussion above is no more than a rudimentary sketch of the argument. What is clear, though, is the critical import of the First Antinomy; that reason is thrust into the impossible situation of affirming mutually incompatible theses-a situation Kant describes as 'the euthanasia of pure reason' (B434). As Allison suggests: What is important is Kant's claim that in each case the cosmological Idea generates two equally compelling but contradictory conceptions

Truth and Possible Experience

2I9

of the unconditioned. Thus in reason's endemic need to 'think the whole', it seems equally 'natura]' or 'rational' to recognize some first element or limit by extending the enquiry into its grounds, or conditions ad infinitum. 2

There is, as it were, no rational way of arbitrating between thesis and antithesis. Reason thus falls into antinomy. Whether the arguments of the First Antinomy are as successful as Kant intends is an open question. 3 For our purposes it is not necessary to examine in detail whether these arguments constitute, as Kant asserts, an actual refutation of transcendental realism, or whether they serve merely as an indirect proof for the correctness qf transcendental idealism. 4 What is of significance is the interpretative strategy Kant adopts with these arguments and their effect on the cogency of the empirical realist interpretation. In brief, the central stratagem Kant advocates for dissolving the apparent antinomy is to identify and challenge the shared transcendental realist epistemic framework in which the confrontation is located. The heart of Kant's analysis in this context) concerns the distinction between the contributions of general logic and transcendental logic. This distinction expresses the difference between the conditions that determine Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 37. My intention centres on how to develop a realist interpretation of empirical realism within the transcendental idealist framework. I am not concerned with developing a strategy for defending the transcendental realist position, which I think is vulnerable to Kant's transcendental idealist assault. 4 In section seven of the Antinomies Kant asserts that reason's fall into antinomy within the transcendental realist framework offers an indirect proof of the correctness of transcendental idealism (B534). This seems to me to be an overstatement of what actually follows from the Antinomies (see Guyer, Kant and the Claims a/Knowledge, ch. I8, for an attack on the indirect proof argument). The attack on the transcendental realist framework assumes the viability of the transcendental idealist framework. In addition, I see no reason to accept Kant's claim that transcendental realism and transcendental idealism form an exhaustive disjunct. If there are more than two possible options, deriving a contradiction in transcendental realism would not prove the truth of transcendental idealism. Rather than regarding this section as a proof for transcendental idealism, it is better to consider the arguments as offering a compelling way of dissolving an otherwise intractable issue--this result being consistent with the truth of transcendental idealism. This counts in favour of transcendental idealism, but it does not constitute a proof. 2

3

-220

Truth and Possible Experience

the character of conceptual analysis, and the conditions that determine the real possibility of things. Kant maintains that the dispute between the "competing" transcendental positions originates with the implicit presupposition that conceptual analysis within the framework of general logic alone is a sufficient basts for the'tletermination of the deep structure of empirical reality. Epistemologically, there is a great deal that is shared between these combatants. The conceptual relations of identity, difference, agreement, and opposition, which are the products of general logic (B3I7), are viewed as determining real identity, differenc6, agreement, and opposition in the sphere of appearances. The most important aspect of general logic, in this context, is the role played by the principle of contradiction. Where a concept is not intrinsically contradictory, the empirical reality of its object is regarded as possible. Following on this, when one of the propositions in a true disjunction is negated, the object of the other proposition is thus affirmed. In the First Antinomy, for example, as there is nothing analytically contradictory in the mere concept of the world, "the world" is introduced as a possible object of knowledge. In both the thesis and antithesis portions of the argument, the exposition of a contradiction in the opposing concept of the world is viewed as a necessary and sufficient condition for the establishment of the reality of the favoured proposition (Br89). It is on the basis of the principle of contradiction, and the conceptual relations of identity, that both antagonists are able to affirm the truth of their respective theses. Kant in this way traces the emergence of Antinomies in cosmological matters back to the (false) meta-epistemic assumption that the constraints of general logic are viewed as sufficient conditions for the determination of the real existence of possible objects of experience. Both the empiricist and rationalist halves of the First Antinomy (thesis and antithesis respectively5) operate under the assumption that the determination of the world proceeds as an investigation of a self-subsistent whole. The world is deemed to 5 For a good discussion of the empiricist and rationalist underpinnings of the Thesis and Antithesis positions, see S. Al-Azm, The Origins of Kant's Argument in the Antinomies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

Truth and Possible Experience

22I

be a possible object of knowledge on the basis of meeting the minimum requirement that the concept of the object is not intrinsically contradictory. The real possibility of the world as a given whole is thus built into the structure of the dispute. On the assumption that the world is a possible object, and given a proof of a contradiction in the subject joined with the opposing predicate, we can straightforwardly derive the desired predicate. The priority of general logic is clearly reflected in the structure of the argument of the First Antinomy. The logical structure of the antinomy can be symbolized as follows (3w) (Fw v ~Fw). If w (the world) is a possible object, then one of the predicates necessarily belongs to it. If we assume that w is a possible real object, then, with the aid of the principle of bivalence, it follows directly that, where one of the disjunctions is false, the other is true. No other option is open. Kant is fully justified in pointing out that what the arguments contest, in the context of general logic, is merely which predicate should be assigned to the subject (the world). The substantive question concerning whether the subject of the predicate is in fact a possible object of knowledge, and thus whether either predicate is a candidate for real truth claims, is left entirely untouched. It is this (false) identification of the real with the constraint afforded by general logic alone that is the central target of Kant's attack on the transcendental realist framework. This meta-epistemic commitment is shared by both "competing" parties in the Antinomy. The strategy Kant adopts for declaring each thesis false (B532-4) centres on his challenge to the precritical conceptual constraints that are thought to determine the nature of reality.6 While Kant accepts that 'no cognition can 6 In the spirit of semantic anti-realism, some have interpreted Kant's resolution of the Antinomies in terms of meaning conditions. The claim is that the Antinomies show how language is (mis)used. Both thesis and antithesis are meaningless, rather than false. Guyer comes close to this conclusion, arguing that Kant has shown merely that thesis and antithesis are undecidable rather than false (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 406). He thinks there is a hidden premiss that equates undecidability with falsity. The linguistic anti-realist move is to connect this premiss with a lack of meaningfulness. Those who have followed in the wake of Strawson and Dummett have been drawn to the more Wittgensteinian claim that language use, at times, creates its own set of illusions.

Truth and Possible Experience

222

be opposed to it [the principle of contradiction) without annihilating itself', nonetheless, we cannot 'expect any advice from it in regard to the truth of this sort of [synthetical] cognition' (BI9 I

).

Both halves of the Antinomy il~ this way can be viewed as false, because each interpretation admits, under the existential quantifier, an object (the world) independent of the constraints of transcendental logic. Both positions assert a synthetic proposition on the basis of what is merely a necessary and sufficient condition for analytic judgements. Meeting the hurdle of logical consistency is a necessary, but 110t sufficient, condition for synthetic judgements. We therefore have a merely dialectical opposition as opposed to an analytical opposition: 'Thus two judgments dialectically opposed to one another could both be false, because one does not merely contradict the other, but says something more than is required for a contradiction' (BS32). Does the distinction between the contributions of general logic and transcendental logic constitute a fair appraisal of the basis of the transcendental realist position as formulated in the First Antinomy? In what way do the empiricist and rationalist approaches developed in the Antinomies fall subject to Kant's careful separation of transcendental logic from general logic? On the empiricist side it is clear how the constraint that mere logical possibility enforces doubles as a constraint on real possibility? Hume's fundamental distinction between "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact" is motivated by the desire to connect real possibility with the constraints of logical possibility. If we can conceive an object without conceptual contradiction, then that object is a [real] possible object of experience. Real possibility is directly tied to logical possibility. As Hume suggests: ' 'Tis an establish'd maxim in metaphysics, That whatever the mind clearly conceives includes the idea of [its] possible existence, or in other words, that nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible.'8 Matters of fact are constrained only 7 As is apparent from what follows, the empiricism referred to here is Hume's. Both Berkeley and Locke maintain some features (causality in the former, substance and causality in the latter) that act as independent constraints on the realm of the possible. S Hurne, Treatise, bk. I, part II, sect. III.

Truth and Possible Experience

223

by general logical possibility. Unlike relations of. ideas, the negation of any proposition is similarly conceivable and is therefore possible: 'We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind.'9 On the empiricist view, what is conceivable is experientially possible. Consequently, the only constraint on possible experience offered by the empirical idealist is the ability to conceive (without contradiction) the object or event. Kant finds in Leibniz's argument for the identity of indiscernibles (B327-8) a representative example of rationalism's deep commitment to the priority of the conceptual domain (conditions of general logic) as the basis for real possibility. Because Leibniz views the discrimination of objects in purely conceptual terms, without regarding 'their position in the intuition ... ' (B327) as a constitutive contribution to identity, 'it could not have turned out otherwise but that he extended his principle of indiscernibles, which holds merely of concepts of things in general, to the objects of the senses (mundus phanomenon) .. .' (B328). The primacy Leibniz assigns to conceptual analysis as the link between thought and reality, without referenceto temporal and spatial conditions as formative aspects in the identity of real objects, leads him to deny that conceptually indistinguishable objects (those that share the same internal relations) can be differentiated on the grounds of their mere temporal/spatial position. Kant's assault on rationalism targets the epistemic poverty of this view. While I may 'know a drop of water as a thing in itself according to all of its inner determinations ... if it is an appearance in space, then it has its place not merely in the understanding (under concepts), but also in the sensible outer intuition (in space), and ... the physical places are entirely indifferent with regard to the inner determinations of the things .. .' (B328). In both the empiricist and rationalist cases, Kant is not, of course, denying the necessity of including the conditions of general logic as the basis for determinate cognition. The point 9

Hume, Enquiry, sect. IV, Part 1.

224

Truth and Possible Experience

is rather that, while general logic is a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition for the possibility of empirical objects: Whatever the content of our cognition may be, and however it may be related to the object, the general though to be sure only negative condition of all our judgments whatsoever is that they do not contradict themselves ... But even if there is no contradiction with our judgment, it can nevertheless combine concepts in a way not entailed by the object ... and thus, for all that a judgment may be free of any il~ternal contradiction, it can still be either false or groundless. (BI8r90) That in such a concept no contradictioh must be contained is, to be sure, a necessary logical "Condition; but it is far from sufficient for the objective reality of the concept, for the possibility of such an object as is thought through the concept. (B268)

Kant begins with the partnership of sensibility and thought as the basis for objectively valid judgements; thus the mere lack of contradiction in a concept, or the derivation of a contradiction in a mutually exclusive concept, is insufficient for the real possibility of a corresponding empirical object. The Analytic of the Understanding, as we have seen, is designed to supply the transcendental logic (schematized forms of judgement) by means of which the two sources of cognition are originally united in judgement. The transcendental realist/empirical idealist framework shared by Hume and Leibniz equates real possibility with the structure of conceptual possibility because it fails, Kant maintains, to recognize that the conditions of real possibility are further constrained by the transcendental conditions of possible experience. The mere lack of contradiction in the concept of a thing is an insufficient basis for opening up the possibility of an empirically real object: The concept is always possible if it does not contradict itself. This is the logical mark of possibility ... Yet it can nonetheless be an empty concept, if the objective reality of the synthesis through which the concept is generated has not been established in particular; but as was shown ... this always rests on principles of possible experience and not on the principles of analysis (on the principle of contradiction). This is a warning not to infer from the possibility of the concept (logical possibility) to the possibility of the thing (real possibility). (B624, footnote)

Truth and Possible Experience

225

Kant's warning serves as a reminder that the all-too-natural connection drawn between logical possibility and the real possibility of things indicates the tacit involvement of the transcendental realist framework. The implicit appeal to general logic as a necessary and sufficient condition for real possibility builds into the antinomy the (false) transcendental realist condition that nature can be cognized as a given whole independent of the unending regress by means of which empirical knowledge is first established. The attack on the transcendental realist assumption forms the basis of Kant's assertion that the two judgements of the antinomy are not, in fact, real opposites: 'If two mutually opposed judgments presuppose an inadmissible condition, then despite their conflict (which is, however, not a real contradiction) both of them collapse because the condition collapses under which alone either of them would be valid' (B53 I

).

By omitting transcendental logic from the original equation, the transcendental realist is committed to a conception of knowledge as relating ultimately to things-in-themselves-that is, things considered independently of the conditions by means of which objects of experience become possible. The force of Kant's case in the Antinomies against viewing nature as a thingin-itself is thus located within the broad transcendental idealist framework: 'the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience' (BI97). Each party in the antinomy mistakenly views an empty concept (the world)-one that meets the constraint of general logic but not of transcendental logic-as signifying a real possible subject. Kant rightly concludes that, since both operate under this false assumption,1O we can safely regard both conclusions as being false. In this way Kant is able to support his claim that reason is caught in a mere dialectical opposition, rather than in a genuine antinomy of reason: 'the antinomy of pure reason in its cosmological ideas is removed by showing that it is merely dialectical 10 It is best to regard this as a meta-epistemic assumption. It does not relate to a particular empirical claim about the world, but rather to a pre-theoretic commitment to viewing objects of knowledge independently of the sensible conditions of knowledge.

Truth and Possible Experience and a conflict due to an illusion arising from the fact that one has applied the idea of absolute totality, which is valid only as a condition of things in themselves, to appearances ... ' (B534). Lastly, it is important to note that the antinomies are not based on a rejection of the principle of bivalence. Kant is not advancing the claim that there are more or less than two truthvalues for a proposition. On the contrary, he is committed to the view that, when propositions make reference to (real) pos' sible objects of experience, bivalence holds firm: The proposition Everything existing is thoroughly determined signifies not only that of every given pair of oppo;ed predicates, but also every pair of possible predicates, one of them must always apply to it ... What it means is that in order to cognize a thing completely one has to cognize everything possible and determine the thing through it, whether affirmatively or negatively. (B60I)

Kant's claim is that every concept that refers to an object that meets the criteria of being a possible object of experience (meets the conditions set down by transcendental logic) entails a complete set of predicate determinations. II Although the working-out of this inherent content is the responsibility of reflective judgement-concepts of real objects are never fully expressed in concreto by the understanding-the germane point is that Kant regards the concept of the object as intrinsically complete. The determination captured by the relevant predicate is either true or false of the object. Its truth or falsity is signified already in the object, not because it is a purely analytic judgement, but because a synthetical judgement has already been made in transcendental logic by means of which this object is deemed to be a real (spatial/temporal) entity. The 11 It may be suggested that I am conflating a Kantian commitment to the law of the excluded middle with a modern bivalence treatment. In what follows in the remainder of this chapter 1 in fact argue that Kant's approach is not consistent with the modern semantically driven attack on the principle of bivalence. My immediate claim is simply that the determinability of empirical objects is not threatened by Kant's dismissal of the meta-empirical claims made in the Antinomies by means of his claim that they lack determination according to the principle of the law of the excluded middle. By 'bivalence' in the above section I mean nothing more than the claim that the determination of an object is by means of a two-placed truth valence model of predicate use.

Truth and Possible Experience

227

assertion of bivalence piggybacks on the synthetic character of all judgements of experience: The principle of thoroughgoing determination thus deals with the content and not merely logical form. It is the principle of the synthesis of all predicates which are to make up the complete concept of a thing, and not merely of the analytic representation, through one of two opposite predicates. .. (B6oo) The determinability of every single concept is the universality (universalttas) ofthe principle of excluded middle between two opposed predicates; but the determination of a thing is subordinate to the allness (universatas) or the sum total of all possible experience. (B6oo, footnote)

The lesson Kant develops in the antinomies is therefore not that the bivalence of propositions fails to obtain. It is rather that the propositions in question fail to clear the initial hurdle of meeting the conditions of transcendental logic. Kant is not suspending his commitment to a two-placed model of truth in conjunction with the principle of the excluded middle. Rather, the reason we are entitled to think of both thesis and antithesis as false in the First Antinomy is because each claim introduces an object (the world) that is not a (real) possible object of experience. The "inadmissible condition" that falls "to the ground" is an artefact of the unguarded use of general logic.

4.I.2. Realism is Possible in the Dialectic If we view the critical force of the Antinomies in conformity with the priority Kant assigns to transcendental logic, the question concerning whether there is room for a realist-inspired interpretation of the manifold of appearances (the intrinsically structured realm of empirical things-in-themselves) remains open. The central negative lesson we have traced out in the Antinomies, which extends to the Dialectic as a whole, concerns the modest claim that knowledge of objects is constrained by the epistemic conditions that serve as the basis for knowledge. The force of the central message of the Dialectic, interpreted in this way, is in conformity with the Analytic's

Truth and Possible Experience

228

description of the conditions and limits of knowledge, and with the extension of the attack on the "common prejudice" of the in both its rationalist and transcendental realist framework I ' empiricist formulations. Unfortunately, the negative message of the Antinomies is often interpreted in ,a way that precludes the possibility of a realist interpretation within the proper constraints of transcendental logic. Consider the following, representative account, from K. Rogerson: A fair translation of Kant ... is to say' that [transcendental] realism assumes that we should be able to know (or at least describe) states of affairs that, while logically possible, may be unknowable. But, of course, Kant rejects this position. His alternative recommendation (his idealism) is to 'suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge'. It is not implausible to understand this as the anti-realist claim that we are in a better position to account for descriptions of the world if we confine descriptions to states of affairs which are in principle knowable. The position Kant rejects, transcendental realism, holds that statements about objective states of affairs have a truth value even if such states of affairs are in principle unknowable--exceed our epistemic constraints. 12 We can see Kant as arguing for an epistemic theory of truth. We can make no true or false statements unless we can in principle have evidence for such statements. 13

There is much here that is correct. In each of these passages Rogerson successfully identifies the epistemic shift Kant is embracing: replacing the transcendental realist view with an epistemic-centred account of (possible) knowledge. The connection between conceptual analysis and reality that informs the transcendental realist view yields to the priority of transcendental logic (the Analytic) as the basis for empirical truth and knowledge. As Kant puts it, the 'proud name of an ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognitions of things in general ... must give way to the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding' (B303). Also, as Rogerson sug12 13

K. Rogerson, 'Kantian Ontology', Kant-Studien, 84 (1993), 14-15. Ibid. 20.

Truth and Possible Experience

229

gests, Kant does deny that we can attribute truth-values to states of affairs independently of the conditions of experience. This restriction goes to the heart of Kant's claim that we cannot, in Rogerson's words, 'exceed our epistemic constraints'. The structure of experience acts as a reality determining constraint on the realm of possible truths and ontological commitments. We should affirm that much of Rogerson's characterization. It is a restatement of the commitment to Principle 3. Empirical knowledge is restricted to experience and its possible advance. Where, then, does Rogerson's account go wrong? I have urged that Principle 3 should be interpreted in conformity with a modest and negative claim. A central message of the Critique is that the prioritization of transcendental logic over general logic is expressed by the prioritization of the conditions for the possibility of experience as the fundamental ground for all knowledge claims. Kant wants to bar the (illegitimate) extension of truth claims beyond the transcribed domain of possible experience. If we treat the role of possible experience as motivated by Kant's negative lesson-curtailing the pretensions of pure reason-then the primary message that emerges from the Antinomies offers no reason, in principle, for ruling out the pursuit of a realist, truth-conditional analysis of the constraint experience imposes within the confines of transcendental logic. Rogerson simply assumes that the rejection of the transcendental realist view that truth is radically independent of the structure of human experience means that Kant also rejects the idea that there may be recognition-transcendent truths within the field of possible experience. That shift is unwarranted. It takes a lesson derived from the mismatch of general and transcendental logic and (mis)applies it within the framework of transcendental logic itself. Rogerson thinks that, because Kant precludes the use of the truth predicate beyond possible experience, the truth predicate therefore has application only in those cases where 'we can in principle have evidence for such statements'. This rash move conflates the priority of transcendental logic with an anti-realist commitment to an evidentially constrained conception of empirical truth. Kant makes no such claim.

23 0

Truth and Possible Experience

Rogerson, perhaps sensitive to the haste of the shift, does try to ease the passage somewhat by including in the idea of evidence the notion of what can "in, principle" be established by experience. As we shall see below, how we interpret the notion of "in principle" is essential. Anti-realist and pragmatist interpretations of Kant's position rest on how liberally we interpret this notion. Pushed to the extreme, we will find that the idea of evidence in terms of what we can "in principle" experience is no different from the realist's truth-condition (as opposed to antirealist evidence-driven) approach. For the moment I wish simply to highlight the claim that the limitative message that we find in the Antinomies leaves open the question of how to interpret the deployment of the truth predicate within the framework of transcendental logic. The negative lesson of the Antinomies does not preclude the possibility of something other than an assertion-condition interpretation of truth at the empirical level. In other words, a realist, truth-conditional approach is still possible even after we acknowledge the force of Kant's attack on transcendental realism in the Dialectic.

4.2. THE NATURE OF THE CONSTRAINT IMPOSED BY EXPERIENCE 4.2.0. Introduction

In the preceding section we established a rough parallel between the negative epistemic lesson of the Antinomies-that objects must conform to our mode of knowledge--and the priority of transcendental logic over general logic as the basis for epistemic and ontological commitments. The question we will examine in the remainder of this chapter concerns the positive formulation Kant offers of the relation between truth and human inquiry. The task is to show how Kant delivers a conception of empirical truth that is consistent with his empirical realism. At the end of Chapter 3 we saw that the anti-realist and pragmatist assertion-condition approaches to the relation between

Truth and Possible Experience

23 I

inquiry and truth are currently the preferred options for interpreting Kant's account of empirical truth. The epistemic humanist and the ultimate realist interpretations of empirical realism examined in Chapters I and 2 each, in their different ways, belong to this tradition. What makes these approaches initially appealing is that they seem to capture the epistemic-driven force of Kant's emphasis on "possible experience" as the fundamental ground for all our experiential judgements. When Kant locates ontological commitment within the framework of «experience and its possible advance", he appears to be implementing the kind of connection between equating truth and inquiry that modern assertioncondition approaches offer: tying the range of legitimate experiential assertions to the constraints imposed by the nature of human inquiry. Like Kant's notion of "possible experience", assertion-conditions putthe circumstances of experience in the epistemic foreground. As the pragmatist C. Misak has argued, the conception of truth should include nothing 'over and above what can be squeezed out of the notion of inquiry' .14 In this context; Robert Hanna's remark on Kant's account of judgement is representative: 'Kant's theory of meaning for empirical judgments is not only truth-theoretic, but truth-theoretic in precisely the verificationist sense whereby, according to the middle Wittgenstein's influential remark, "the sense of a proposition is the method of its verification" .'15 Anti-realism, at least of the dominant Dummettian variety, is prompted by considerations largely connected to the conditions for understanding that come out of Frege and Wittgenstein. Meaningfulness is tied to use. Semantic issues are fundamental. The pragmatist view tends to be more traditionally epistemological in orientation,16 motivated by the general desire to account for empirical truth in terms of idealized evidential conditions for warranted assertibility. Empirical truth is equated with the very best that human practices can deliver. Misak, Truth and the End of Inquiry, 44. Robert Hanna, 'The Trouble with Truth in Kant's Theory of Meaning', History of Philosophy Quarterly, lOtI (1993). 16 J am considering primarily the dominant Peirce and Putnam interpretations. 14 15

Truth and Possible Experience What links the two positions, and makes them obvious candidates for explicating Kant's formulation of truth, is the broad commitment to the constitutive !91e experience plays as the basis for justified true belief. This shift towards epistemologizing the notions of truth and knowledge is consonant with the central messag~ of the Copernican revolution: that the proud name of ontology must give way to the modest title of an analytic of understanding. It is a testament to the close connection between these programmes that pragmatists and anti-realists have at times attempted to lay claim to the spirit of Kant's analysis. 17 Empirical realism may appear therefore to fit rather neatly into this inquiry-constrained framework. Kant's principal claim that empirical knowledge extends no farther than the limits of "experience and its possible advance" seems closely related to the assertion-condition repudiation of the idea of recognition-transcendent truths. Kant's governing statement in the opening passages of the Analytic of Principles that 'the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience' (BI97) appears to merge cleanly with the critical thrust of the anti-realist and pragmatist accounts. Opening up epistemic space between Kant's approach and these modern positions is crucial to the task of legitimizing the realist credentials of empirical realism. It will be argued in this section that, despite the surface similarities between empirical realism and contemporary assertion-condition approaches, empirical realism is best understood as remaining within the truth-condition, realist position. This conclusion, drawn primarily from considerations in the Dialectic, will serve to reinforce the realist-driven interpretation of Kant's account of representation (the Analytic) developed in the preceding chapters. The strategy for separating Kant's treatment from the assertion-condition approach is as follows. I will offer three versions of warranted 17 The most recent is H. Putnam's experiment in the 19805 and early 1990S with his "Internal-realism" and Kant's empirical realism. See H. Putnam, 'Reference and Truth', in Realism and Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 85.

Truth and Possible Experience

233

assertibility accounts of empirical truth: (r) the "here and now" (anti-realist), (2) Secular Idealization (tenseless justification), and (3) Divine Idealization (ideally placed observer). These versions will be judged in terms of which, if any, adequately captures the kind of constraint on the concept of truth Kant intends by his notion of "possible experience". It will be argued that the vigorous anti-realist position (r) fails outright. While the inquiry-constrained conception of truth in (2) captures something of Kant's analysis, it will be shown to offer an account of evidence that is too restrictive. The third candidate, "Divine Idealization", offers a formulation that is sufficiently broad to capture Kant's notion of "possible experience". I accept this characterization of Kant's deployment of the truth predicate. Nonetheless, the radically liberalized conception of the inquiry constraint this position affirms effectively jettisons the evidence-driven core of the assertion-condition approach itself. This position is no longer a form of assertion-condition pragmatism. It is, in fact, a disguised'truth-conditional form of realism.

4-2.I. Idolizing the Constraint of Inquiry (i) Assertibility here and now The idea that true belief should be associated with warranted assertibility on the basis of present evidence is not an attractive option on epistemological grounds. Neither does it reflect the type of inquiry constraint on the conception of truth Kant intends. While there are many variations of this view, the driving force behind much of the contemporary interest in the anti-realist, assertion-condition approach is M. Dummett's semantic antirealism. 18 The central tenet of Dummett's programme is that a necessary condition for understanding a sentence is the practical ability to recognize when the sentence is true. The focus of 18 Dummett's influence ranges far and wide in this area. Crispin Wright is perhaps the best modern representative of this tradition. It should be noted that in his later work, in particular his concept of superassertibility as detailed in T,'Uth and Objectivity, Wright has pulled back from some of the harder edges of Dnmmett's attack on realism.

Truth and Possible Experience

234

Dummett's attack on the truth-conditions approach to meaning is that it fails to discharge the task of explaining how we can grasp the relevant states of affairs: 'Th~ tr,uth of such a sentence can consist only in the occurrence of the sort of situation in which we have learned to recognize it as true, and its falsity in the occurrence of the sort of situation in which we have learned to recognize it as false ... '19 The practical conditions for understanding thus prefigure judgements concerning the truth or falsity of a proposition. Realist appeals to bivalence are really just disguised expressions of the realist "prejudice" that truth is somehow independent of our practical abilities to determine it. For Dummett, truthconditions are an insufficient basis for accounting for the act of understanding because they are, in many cases, verification transcendent: they assert conditions that outpace our abilities to manifest such knowledge. For the semantic anti-realist, assertionconditions tied to manifestable practices should replace truthconditions as the basis for understanding. Dummett's anti-realism asserts that the ability to hold a proposition true is determined directly by the set of conditions of usc and verification: We no longer explain the sense of a statement by stipulating its truthvalue in terms of the truth-values of its constituents, but by stipulating when it may be asserted in terms of the conditions under which its constituents may be asserted. The justification for this change is that this is how we in fact learn to use these statements: furthermore, the notions of truth and falsity cannot be satisfactorily explained so as to form a basis for an account of meaning once we leave the realm of effectively decidable statements. 20

A stringent standard of significance thus rules out commitments relating to the determinacy of the truth-values of recognition-transcendent propositions. Bivalence is renounced. Statements about the unreconstructable past and other verification-transcendent propositions are viewed as meaningless. 21 19

Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth,

1973),468.

Michael Dummett, 'Truth', in Truth and Other Enigmas, 17-18. In Truth and Objectivity, Crispin Wright develops a minimalist account of truth that is a second-generation response to some of the difficulties entailed 20

21

Truth and Possible Experience

235

Viewed as an epistemological thesis, Dummett's tight identification of warranted belief with current practices and procedures for justification offers an unacceptably narrow formulation of true belief. This is not, of course, a stinging objection to the Dummettian programme itself. Nor is it something he has not heard before. Dummett believes that semantic concerns prefigure epistemological problems. Nevertheless, with respect to empirical realism, it is clear that this type of constraint is not what Kant intends. Kant's conception is in terms of "possible experience" rather than "use"-the conditions necessary for the possibility of determinate representation rather than Dummett's worry about the conditions necessary for learning. The Kantian position is linked to a forward-looking thesis concerning experience and its possible advance. Assertion-conditions restricted to current practices fail to meet this basic requirement. (ii) Seclflar idealization Like the anti-realist view, the secular idealized interpretation (pragmatism proper) rejects the realist conception of truth as independent of the nature of human inquiry. Pragmatism endorses the view that empirical truth should be understood as an inquiry-constrained concept. Pragmatism, like the more stringent forms of anti-realism, also renounces the transcendental realist's God's-eye perspective. This challenge to realism is motivated by a rejection of the recognition-transcendent conception of truth deployed in the realist truth-condition model. Idealized warranted assertibility, rather than unconstrained truth-conditions, lies at the centre of the pragmatist programme. As Posy suggests: 'Instead of speaking about what must be the case in the world (or in some model) by Dummett's broad-front approach. Wright develops a pluralistic account of the relevant issues-stressing the normative features that operate in many language settings and linking these to the ideas of the stability and unalterability of the truth predicate. He contends that his conception of superassertibility (stability of truth in the light of future possible evidence) comes close to the anti-realist approach inspired by Dummett. Wright locates the realism/antirealism debate in terms of whether anything beyond a minimalist description of the (superassertibility) use of the truth predicate is required. His charge against realism is designed to show that the realist has a heavy burden in showing why local language lise requires anything beyond this evidentially constrained conception of truth (see pp. 78-9).

2.3 6

Truth and Possible Experience

for a given sentence to be true, we speak [instead] about what sort of evidence will suffice to warrant the speech act of asserting the sentence. '22 The pragmatist does not claim, as the anti-realist does, that current procedures for the determination of a proposition's truth-value constitute a sufficient criterion for effective decidability. What separates the pragmatist's constraint on the notion of truth from the semantic anti-realist's positi~n is the view that assertion-conditions should be idealized so as to capture the full force of what inquiry may yield. 23 Pragmatism is generally less semantic and more epistemologically driven than anti-realism in this respect. The pragmatist is willing to rule out those propositions that fail to connect with the informative upshot of inquiry, not because they fail to meet conditions necessary for meaning, but because they are spurious to inquiry. By idealizing away tensed justification, and substituting the counterfactual of what we would agree to at the end of inquiry,24 pragmatism builds in the epistemic constraint on the basis of the intuition that there is nothing more to truth than what inquiry can, in principle, yield. Truth is therefore identified with the best that inquiry can deliver. Where the warrants for a belief meet no recalcitrant experience, and where inquiry could never improve upon the evidence for belief, the question "but is this really true?" is viewed as no more than stubborn realist foot-stamping. C. Posy, 'Kant's Mathematical Realism', Monist, 67 (I984), 120. There are, of course, intermediate positions between pragmatic and antirealist approaches. Crispin Wright's form of minimalism is a good example. As already mentioned, Wright's notion of superassertibility focuses on the notion of warrant, where warrant is understood as what would 'survive arbitrarily close scrutiny of its pedigree and arbitrarily extensive increments to or other forms of improvement of our information' (Truth and Objectivity, 48). Although Wright denies that this formulation is close to the "ideal limit of inquiry" approach offered by Putnam and Peirce (pp. 46,)' it does seem at least to tilt in that direction. For an interesting recent attack on Wright's view, see Bernhard Weiss, 'Anti-Realism, Truth-Value Links and Tensed Truth Predicates', Mind, I05 (1996), 575-602. For an excellent exchange between Wright and his critics, see Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 56/4 22

23

(1996). 24 Pierce's "end-of-inquiry" counter factual is a dear and instructive expression of the pragmatist approach. While I will adopt Peirce's description, I recognize that there are other competing formulations.

"Truth and Possible Experience

237

The priority assigned to inquiry as the basis for the establishment of truth-values means that, where a proposition fails to have consequences in inquiry under idealized conditions, we have no grounds for assigning it a determinate truth-value. As Putnam suggests: 'if both a statement and its negation could be "justified", even if conditions were as ideal as one could hope to make them, [then] there is no sense in thinking of the statement as having a truth-value.'25 Commenting on Putnam's approach, Wright correctly points out: 'We can expect that an internal realist would want to suspend the principle of bivalence for statements which would find themselves beached at the limit of ideal enquiry ... and ought consequently, one would imagine, to want to suspend it in any case, failing an assurance that no statements are actually in that situation.'26 It should be recognized at the.outset that, on the pragmatist interpretation, truth is not governed by the principle of bivalence. For example, if, at the end of inquiry, experience failed to determine the truth-value of the proposition "Homo-sapiens sapiens evolved in Africa", then this hypothesis would fail to meet the pragmatist test of significance and would therefore be judged spurious. Like anti-realism, secular idealization entails a set of propositions whose truth-value is indeterminate. Although, owing to pragmatism's less restrictive constraint on evidential considerations, it should be granted that this set of statements is much reduced. The pragmatist analysis appears to be consistent with a compelling contemporary interpretation of Kant's empirical realism. Each thesis affirms an experientially constrained conception of empi rical truth and both accounts connect evidential considerations with a forward-looking analysis of justified belief. Unfortunately for its proponents, the pragmatist interpretation of Kant's analysis runs up against references in Kant's work that point to the possibility of genuine recognition-transcendent, inquiry-relevant facts. For example, in the Dialectic Kant offers 25 Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198I), 56. 26 Wright, Truth and Objectivity, p. 39.

Truth and Possible Experience remarks that support a realist interpretation of the past (BS46, BS23), claiming that 'all those events which have elapsed from an inconceivable past time prior to my ovyn existence .. .' (BS23) can be acknowledged as real (and thus trut}{..pertaining) in so far as we do have a rule (furnished by the ideas of pure reason) that allows us to move backwards io an indefinitely determined series of possible experiences. To this can be added remarks in which Kant's dissociation of ontological commitments from perceptual limits leads him to affirm the determinacy of propositions concerning (spatially) distant objects. Concerning the existence of stars he claims that 'they are there to be encountered in world-space even if no human being has ever perceived them or ever will perceive them .. .' (BS24; emphasis added; see also BpI) B69I). Of course examples are no substitute for arguments. These examples of temporal and spatial perceptual dislocation merely offer a clue that Kant is committed to the determinate truthvalues of some propositions that are inquiry transcendent. As a first approximation, let us group these inquiry-transcendent facts under the banner of "hidden truths". Hidden truths are facts that remain outside the set of truths that would emerge even at the end of inquiry. The relevant argument is to be located in Kant's gloss on the notion of possible experience and what can be accommodated within that limit. Kant's most explicit discussion of this issue takes place in the context of his remarks about the reality of appearances whose sensory engagement is too weak to produce a corresponding perception in us. These are another class of hidden truths: facts about the world that, for idiosyncratic reasons, are not directly vouchsafed by possible perceptual acts. For example, Kant asserts that our inability to perceive the force of magnetism acting on iron filings does not preclude our commitment to the existence of electromagnetic energy (B273). There is more to the world than what our sensory thresholds can reveal. Kant maintains that the reason sensory thresholds fail to act as limits on the domain of possible facts is because the crudeness of our perceptual modalities 'does not affect the form of possible experience in general .. .' (B273). The formal character of possible experience relates to the structure of possible perceptions,

Truth and Possible Experience

239

not to the idiosyncratic structure of actual perceptions that emerges in the "end-of-inquiry" model,27 There is, therefore, a matter of fact at issue when discussing the existence of quarks, or far distant galaxies, even though human inquiry may never converge on a resolution concerning their existence. The regress Kant is proposing, from perception to perception, should be interpreted in conformity with the relaxed restriction that "possible perception" does not require our ability to be now, or in the future, actually conscious of them. As Kant remarks: 'what is required is only the progress from appearances to appearances, even if they should not yield any actual perception (if this perception is too weak in degree to become an experience for our consciousness), because despite this they would still belong to possible experience' (BSSo). The notion of a regress is not restricted to what we would actually perceive at the end of inquiry. It relates instead to the formal structure of the regress itself as we extend it, counterfactually, to the desired point. 28 We thus gain a firmer grip on the way Kant connects the inquiry constraint with the concept of truth by interpreting the formal constraint imposed by possible experience in more 27 It should be noted that for similar reasons it would be incorrect to graft Kant's empirical realism to Van Fraassen's Constructive Empiricism. Kant, unlike van Fraassen, is committed to facts abollt objects that exist below our sensory thresholds. Rae Langton in Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) offers a similar tion of an empiricist reading, noting that 'we can in principle have experience of whatever affects us, regardless of how remote the possibility of our ever being directly aware of it' (p. 189). Langton grounds Kant's commitment to the reality of unobservables to a residual commitment on Kant's part to Leibniz's mirror thesis, interpreted now in terms of mutual causal determination by Kant in the Third Analogy. I agree with Langton that the Third Analogy does help ground Kant's view that individual empirical objects have a fine-grained character that often exceeds our sensory thresholds. I suggest, though, that Langton's appeal to the Leibnizian roots of Kant's analysis fails to offer sufficient grounds for securing a realist interpretation of the status of unobservables. 28 As Kant offers few helpful remarks in this context, it must be admitted that the above emphasis on the formal structure of experience in general remains a somewhat underdeveloped notion. In the following sections we will add collateral evidence that affirms the advantage of interpreting Kant in the suggested manner.

Truth and Possible Experience liberalized terms than the "end-of-inquiry" approach can deliver. What then emerges is an interesting difference between the governing concept of "the form of experience in general", and the pragmatist "idealized-inqufry" formulation. While this difference may seem like splitting epistemological hairs, it speaks directly to the failure of secular idealization. Like anti-realism, the above pragmatist is committed to a renunciation of the determinacy of propositions that transcend our capacities for recognition under secular idealized conditions. These propositions range from mundane concerns about the number of sneezes Winston Churchill managed on a certain day,29 to more serious scientific hypotheses. The determination of the "out-of-Africa" hypothesis, for example, may belong to the set of propositions that, even when all the evidence is in, remains unresolved. Accordingly, even important areas of science will fall within the range of the set of propositions that come out as indeterminate on the pragmatist interpretation. These propositions are not recognition transcendent in the sense of being transcendentally realistic. They do not relate to (putative) objects that are radically (noumenally) independent of the nature of human experience. We are not trying to introduce noumenal objects. Rather, these propositions affirm the possibility of hidden truths at the empirical level of experience. It may be possible to dismiss examples like Churchill's sneezes on the grounds that such propositions would never figure in a mature set of hypothesis at the end of inquiry anyway.30 The "out-of-Africa" class of hypothesis is not so easily dismissed. Here there does seem to be a good case for suggesting that the secularized form of pragmatism leaves these experience-relevant questions unacceptably (on the Kantian view) indeterminate. This is a significant cost. The idea of propositions that have a bearing on experience and yet are regarded as outside considerations of truth runs counter to the intuition that there is a truth relevant to experience that remains, unfortunately, beyond the limits that even idealized inquiry inevitably imposes. As shall be discussed in the following subsection, the 29 See J. Smart, 'Realism and Idealism', Philosophy, 61 (1986), for a discussion of these types of examples. 30 This is Peirce's strategy for dissolving the problem.

Truth and Possible Experience Kantian appeal to the structure of experience in general as the basis for "evidential" warrants supplies an epistemic route for affirming the truth-value nature of those propositions that fail, owing to the idiosyncratic character of human inquiry, ever to have consequences in experience. By linking the constraints on evidence to idealized inquiry, the secular interpretation keeps the human-tethered conception of truth intact, but at the cost of offering a conception of truth that is too narrow for a compelling reconstruction of Kant's account of truth. The Kantian commitment to the idea of "hidden truths" serves to highlight why the pragmatist conception of inquiry is not equivalent to the Kantian conception of"experience in general". The price to be paid for marrying our grasp of truth to idealized conditions for assertion is that these optimal warrants remain eternally hostage to the idiosyncratic limitations any form (individual or collective) of inquiry, by its nature, imposes. 31 The Kantian analysis, in terms of the structure of experience in general, points to a more liberal conception of the contours of possible experience. (iii) Divine idealization This strategy involves relaxing the restriction on what can count as an inquiry-based evidential warrant for true belief. To meet the challenge posed by giving up bivalence for recognition-transcendent propositions, advocates of this interpretation32 propose enlarging the notion of inquiry to include those propositions that, on the secular view, are recognition transcendent. This strategy remedies the lack of evidential considerations encountered in the standard formulation by adding to that stock what inquiry would reveal if 'an indefinitely prolonged human inquiry [were pursued] in which, per impossible, our evidence gathering capacities are unrestricted'. 33 This 31 This is not, of course, an embarrassment to the pragmatist position. On the contrary, it is just these limits that are central to the human-centred conception of truth and knowledge that pragmatism proclaims. 32 N. Jardine, The Fortunes ofInquiry (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). Jardine is a good example of a pragmatist struggling to find a way of reconciling the assertion-condition approach with the common sense belief in recognition transcendence facts. 33 Ibid. 56.

l Truth and Possible Experience move to an unrestricted conception of the evidence relation marks a further (and final) step in the shift away from the narrow conception of warranted assertibility issued by the antirealist and (somewhat) liberalized pragmatist views. The move to an unrestricted conception of evidential warrant is designed to capture, for example, propositions about the past that the standard view regards-,as indeterminate. It is intended to secure the realm of "hidden truths". By incorporating, as an evidential consideration, counterfactuals like "if an observer had been present ... ", the problem posed by the idiosyncratic constraints of human .inquiry is resolved. The proposition "Homo-sapiens sapiens evolved out of Africa" can now be considered as having a determinate truth-value, even if inquiry, under idealized, tenseless conditions, failed to justify an affirmative or negative conclusion. It is important to note that the pragmatist of this variety must, like all pragmatists, maintain some form of connection between inquiry and truth. Jardine, for example, offers a (putative) pragmatist formulation of this unrestricted concept of warrant by invoking the notion of potential time-travellers who, reporting back at regular intervals, keep us up to date with those aspects of the past that an unrestricted notion of assertion-conditions requires. The idea of time-travellers is not a reckless escape into science fiction. The motivation for appealing to the future possibility of time-travellers is central to the pragmatist character of the position. Jardine needs embodied observers who serve to affirm evidential warrants on the basis of counterfactual conditions-"if someone (per impossible) had been there to see it", and so on. Some, however feeble, connection between the limits of human inquiry and the constraint it enforces on the concept of truth is fundamental. Jardine believes that this connection is maintained by the time-traveller account. The determinacy of past states is reclaimed without overstepping the contours of human inquiry. While not a desperate retreat, appeals to time-travellers and the like are still closer to Isaac Asimov than a workable form of pragmatism. The germane point is that, without some kind of connection to (real) human experience, the entirely

Truth and Possible Experience

243

unrestricted counterfactual interpretation of evidence, while capturing the form-based nature of Kant's account, effectively forfeits its assertion-condition credentials. An utterly unrestricted conception of evidential warrant that involves counterfactuals that are, in practice, humanly recognition transcendent is indistinguishable from a realist truth-condition analysis. An evidentially unrestricted counterfactual is a truthcondition. This argument can be brought into sharp focus if we reflect on the original inspiration for the pragmatist interpretation. Pragmatism is motivated by the idea that the concept of truth cannot outdistance the human constraints (idealized) inquiry imposes. This approach was developed in response to the realist truth-condition account, which posits determinate truthvalues without reference to our capacities for determining such states. Pragmatism, like anti-realism, offers a human-centred account of truth. It replaces the realist's God's-eye conception with a dynamic human-oriented approach. Nonetheless, the appeal to assertion-conditions interpreted purely in terms of what «would have been observed if (per impossible) someone had been there to see it" is identical to the role the realist assigns to counterfactuals supported by recognition transcendent truth-conditions. The inclusion of the notion of possible "observation" in the above divine idealization formulation is entirely idle. Observation in this context is unconnected to the constraints inquiry imposes. Its unrestricted nature offers no evidential constraint beyond the standard truth-conditional account. It is thus indistinguishable from the realist truthconditional approach, with the added disadvantage that it sacrifices the human-oriented constraint that informs the original inspiration for adopting it. As Misak suggests, if we appeal to this sort of counterfactual bravado (time-travellers) in order to preserve the principle of bivalence, our grip on the relationship between truth (the aim of inquiry) and inquiry will slip ... A strategy involving counterfactual bravado abandons the pragmatist's commitment to say something about the relationship between truth and inquiry (how it is and should be conducted) and replaces it with a claim about what the

244

Truth and Possible Experience

relationship between truth and inquiry would be if inquiry were something it is not. 34

Anti-realism and pragmatism both support the view that it is rational to believe a proposition has a truth-value if, and only if, in principle, we have a capacity to recognize what would count as a positive or negative outcome. The assertion-condition approach of (i) and (ii) rests on the idea~that "in principle" can be explicated in terms of effective, human procedures that serve rationally to justify our beliefs. Empirical truth does not transcend use. The divine idealized model relaxes the constraint possible experience imposes in order to accommodate otherwise recognition-transcendent propositions. But, in doing so, divine idealization effectively severs the link anti-realism and pragmatism forge between inquiry and an earthbound conception of truth. As Misak suggests, by changing inquiry into something it is not, Jardine abandons the epistemological motivation for an assertion-condition account of truth-that the truth predicate should be informed by the real nature of human inquiry.35 In summary, I agree that divine idealization does in fact capture the liberalized notion of warrant that Kant's unconstrained conception of "experience in general" enforces. Divine idealization, at the same time, reveals why an' entirely unconstrained account of evidential-conditions is truth-condition realism in all but name.

4-2.2.

Inquiry, Truth, and Empirical Realism

In Section 4.1 it was established that the dominant, negative message of the Dialectic concerns the restriction of the realm Misak, Truth and the End ofInquiry, 154. In A Realist Conception of Truth, Alston presents a powerful case for disavowing the pragmatist interpretation on the grounds that it is in principle impossible to spell out the notion of ,111 ideal epistemic situation without invoking the notion of truth (see pp. 199-208). Given the priority 1 attach to truth and reference relations for the possibility of determinate representation, 1 find Alston's claim that truth is not reducible to an idealized account of warrant very attractive. I think, though, that Misak's account is perhaps a more suitable response to the unconstrained pragmatist-focusing as it does on the original motivation for the replacement of truth-conditions with idealized assertionconditions. Divine idealization renounces the motivation entirely. 34

35

Truth and Possible Experience

245

of empirical facts to "experience and its possible advance" . The limits of empirical knowledge are identified with the conditions under which objects can be known. Kant is determined to preclude any reference to the idea that things independent of the structure of experience (things-in-themselves) can be objects of empirical knowledge. This as we have seen is one of the central themes of the Copernican revolution. It also animates Kant's repeated denial of the validity of claims that introduce objects independent of the conditions that serve to render objects of knowledge possible. When Kant states that 'to say that they [empirical objects] exist prior to all my experience means only that they are to be encountered in the part of experience to which I, starting with the perception, must first of all progress' (B 524), he is emphasizing the negative, limiting claim that our know ledge is restricted to things as they are given in conformity with the conditions necessary for cognizing an object. On its own, this negative constraint was found to be still somewhat vague. To bring this central notion into sharper focus, I introduced three assertion-condition formulations. The connection between inquiry and truth outlined in these formulations represents the continuum from anti-realism to realism. As the constraint on what counts as evidence is increasingly liberalized, the assertion-condition reading progressively approaches the truth-condition formulation. The Kantian liberalized conception of possible experience fits only the unconstrained pragmatist version. And this version is a disguised form of truth-condition realism. We are now in a position to appreciate why the anti-realist and pragmatist interpretations of empirical realism have a natural, but false, grip on the interpretation of Kant's account of truth at the empirical level. The essential feature of the assertion-condition approach is the (mis)use of the negative thesis originally directed against the transcendental realist position now transformed into a positive claim at the empirical level. Thus the pragmatist interpretation asserts that, where the proposition in question transcends the inquiry-constrained conditions that serve to establish the proposition's truth or falsity, truth is not at stake.

Truth and Possible Experience Invoking this pragmatist interpretation as a way of reading Kant's account of empirical knowledge
Like Rogerson, Putnam simply equates Kant's attack on the transcendental-realist conception of truth (truth as radically independent of experience) with the view that this negative constraint enforces a positive, assertion-condition constraint within the sphere of its legitimate employment. He conflates the transcendental denial that we can know noumenal thingsin-themselves with an empirical requirement for actual evidence (under temporally idealized conditions) of empirical states of affairs. He believes, therefore, that Kant's (and his own) analysis fits between the metaphysical realist treatment and the antirealist analysis. Against Putnam's view, I maintain that empirical realism constitutes a break with both metaphysical realism, and the asser36

Putnam, 'Reference and Truth', 85.

Truth and Possible Experience

247

tion-condition approach to truth. What separates Kant's analysis from the secular assertion-condition approach is that his notion of the empirical regress connects with the form of experience in general, not with our (idealized) particular abilities to provide content, or sustain inferences, for each formal node in the structure of experience. When Kant states that past states are 'represented as real only in connection with a possible experience and not in itself' (BS23), the locution "not in itself" should be interpreted, I believe, as reinforcing the negative lesson of the Dialectic. Kant simply means that the past is given only in connection with the structure of experience in general, and not as a thing apart from these transcendental conditions. The positive message Kant intends by affirming the reality of the past suggests that it is the general structure of experience that sustains our progressive uncovering of truths with, of course, no guarantee that some truths will not remain hidden under even ideal inquiry conditions: real truths that, unfortunately, remain out of view. If one wishes to describe this formal constraint in terms of assertion-conditions, one could say that Kant is committed to the view that the realm of facts is constrained by what experience, in principle, can deliver, where "in principle" entails what would be evidentially warranted for an ideally placed observer. However, inquiry in terms of this divine idealization furnishes no additional constraint on the conception of truth beyond the realist interpretation. The notion of "observation" is entirely idle. Assertion-conditions are, at this point in the evidence continuum, indistinguishable from truth-conditions. That there are hidden truths beyond what secular idealization can yield is a plausible hypothesis on the structure-ofcognition based interpretation Kant offers. The positive notion of possible experience is interpreted as merely asserting 'the (logical] possibility of prolonging the chain of experience, starting with the present perception, upward to the conditions that determine it in time' (BS23). Hence Kant is able to argue that there is a truth at stake concerning questions like "are there inhabitants on the moon" even if inquiry never converges on a determinate result (BS2.I): we would see them if we were suitably well placed, with dependable powers of observation, and so on. As previously mentioned, for Kant:

Truth and Possible Experience It is all the same to the outcome whether I say that in the empirical progress in space I could encounter stars that are a hundred times farther from me than the most distant ones I see, or whether I say that perhaps they are there to be encountered in world-space even if no human being has ever perceived them or ever will perceive them. (B524}

Kant's commitment to the idea, of hidden truths exemplifies how the empirical realist can me~t the transcendental idealist requirements that: (r) the conditions of the possibility of experience serve as the negative conditions for the possibility of objects of experience, and (2) there is the possibility of determinate recognition-transcendent propositions that, for idiosyncratic reasons connected to the structure of inquiry, will never be known. Kant's notion of truth is therefore neither realist in the transcendental sense, nor anti-realist or pragmatist in the modern assertion-condition sense. Empirical realism offers a third way forward. It rejects the transcendental realist's commitment to things-in-themselves independent of the manner in which objects are given in human cognition. Empirical objects are appearances. Appearances are subject to the transcendental conditions necessary for empirical cognition. We are not entitled to view empirical objects as real independent of the conditions of cognition. Yet this negative constraint on representation does not entail the positive claim that truth is restricted to what secular idealization provides. Kant's commitment to the idea of hidden truths, of facts that transcend our practical capacities, serves to spotlight, at the empirical level, the realist credentials of empirical realism. Kant, like the case of the divine idealizers, accepts that the proper conception of empirical truth includes a commitment to determinate, although unknown, truth-values for humanly recognitiontranscendent propositions. 37 The constraint enforced by the "form of experience in general" operates, therefore, in a twofold manner: (r) as a transcendental limiting condition, providing a way of precluding 37 The pragmatist challenge to my realist reading is twofold. In this chapter I have disarmed the assertion-condition interpretation of truth. In Chapter 5 I tackle the pragmatist view that Kant's treatment of the unity of nature is merely of heuristic import.

Truth and Possible Experience

249

propositions whose (putative) objects fail to meet the conditions necessary for possible experience; and (2) as an indicator of the priority of the formal structure of the manifold of appearance as the basis for truth claims that, at times, extend beyond our human capacities for recognition. This distinction is lost only if we conflate the tight restriction the form of experience in general enforces on transcendentally recognitiontranscendent propositions (involving noumenal things-inthemselves) with the inquiry-constrained conception of Kant's notion of "experience in general". Kant's commitment to the reality of the past and the idea of hidden truths serves to affirm a realist, truth-condition interpretation of empirical realism.

5

The Role of the Ideal of Systematicity: A Realist I nterp,re,tation Credo ut Intellig(Jm (Augustine)

5.0. INTRODUCTION Chapter 4 completed the first part of the task of reconciling the Principle of Empirical Knowledge and the Principle of the Systematicity of Nature with the relevant portions of the Dialectic. The former principle asserts that empirical knowledge pertains to experience and its possible advance. The latter claims that the causal relations of the phenomenal world can transcend the idiosyncratic limits of what experience reveals. As the phenomenal world concerns only appearances (empirical objects), and appearances are given only in experience, a tension arose over the possibility of recognition-transcendent truths-a fundamental feature of any bona fide form of realism. In Chapter 4 we saw how a recognition-transcendent conception of truth at the empirical level is possible without sacrificing Kant's attack on transcendental realism. The final step in consolidating the realist reading requires a discussion of the other relevant lesson of the Dialectic: the ontological significance that flows from the transcendental regulative principle of the idea of the systematicity of nature. Principle 4 claims that the intrinsic relations of the phenomenal world can transcend our experience of them. Clearly an assessment of the regulative principle of systematicity has a direct bearing on the ontological significance of this principle. Is Kant committed to the view that nature, as the sum total of appear-

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

25I

ances, constitutes an independent and determinate whole? Or should we interpret the commitments that emerge in the Dialectic as merely methodological assumptions-necessary for systematic empirical knowledge but, strictly speaking, without objective import? In both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgement, l Kant insists that our ability to unify diverse phenomena under particular causal laws, and to deploy hierarchical systems of laws, depends on the empirical employment of the transcendental principle. This transcendental principle instructs us to treat nature as a systematically structured whole. Although merely regulative in function, adding nothing to the constitution of objects, Kant intimates that the assumption of unity is more than a piece of good methodological advice. He argues that the unity attributed to nature is not something rea,son requests. Systematicity is a transcendental requirement for the possibility of the operation of reflective judgement itself J(B68I). The curious status of this principle, heuristic and subjective on the one hand, necessary and objective on the other, has led many recent commentators to adopt a broadly pragmatist/ methodological interpretation. Contemporary commentators have tended to exploit the "as-if" character of the transcendental principle in order to marry a methodological reading of syst<:~maticity with the pragmatist account of truth. 2 Kitcher's analysis is representative. 3 Building on passages where Kant affirms the methodological import of the principle of systematicity, Kitcher suggests that the principle should be interpreted as a 'methodological principle that we are justified in following'

I In this chapter I relax my earlier restriction concerning keeping principally to the Critique of Pure Reason. Passages from the Critique of Judgement are used in those cases where they have a direct bearing on issues raised in the First Critique. 2 Vaihinger, The Philosophy of'As if . . :, 27I~3I9, is a good early example of this interpretative stance. 3 I am thinking here of Philip Kitcher's defining piece, 'Projecting the Order of Nature', 2OI~35. It should be noted that, in 'The Unity of Science and the Unity of Nature', Kitcher develops his view in a less methodological direction. See below.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

252

where justification 'does not rest on the correctness of nature [a]s systematically unified'. 4 The general thrust of the methodological reading poses a serious an obstacle to a unified realist interpretation of empirical realism as did the assertion-condition approach to truth. If the methodological reading were to exhaust the status Kant assigns to the principle of systematicity, then it would indeed be difficult to integrate the realist (trutfi-condition) interpretation of Principles 3 and 4 with a methodologicallpragmatistinspired account of the role of systematicity. The anti-realist/ pragmatist interpretation of truth (assertion-condition) is the natural bedfellow of the methodological interpretation of systematicity. Each seeks to identify the constraints of knowledge with the character of human practices. Having dispensed with the assertion-condition approach, we must now displace the methodological interpretation in order to reclaim the ontological significance of the transcendental principle of systematicity. A realist interpretation of the transcendental idea of systematicity also has the merit of connecting this principle of the Dialectic with our discussion of the Analytic. RecaJl that the discussion of the Analogies in Chapter 3 centred on making sense of the necessity of regarding the manifold of appearance as intrinsically connected. It is in response to the question: 'what do I understand by the question, how the manifold may be combined in the appearance itself?' (B236) that Kant develops the regulative principles of the understanding (Analogies). These principles supply the basic structures required for the representation of appearances by the understanding. They give rise to the requirement of viewing the manifold of appearances as intrinsically connected in one all-abiding causal nexus. I consider it a virtue of the proposed interpretation of systematicity that it follows this lead. The lessons of the Dialectic are not all negative.

4

Philip Kitcher, 'Projecting the Order of Nature', 2.1I.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

253

S.L THE TASK The realist case depends fundamentally on attributing some kind of objective significance to the principle of systematicity beyond its methodological import. This involves developing an interpretation that exploits Kant's own misgivings over the mere methodological analysis. For example, Kant states in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic: 'One might have believed that this is merely a device of reason for achieving economy, for saving as much trouble as possible ... Yet such a selfish aim can easily be distinguished from the idea, in accordance with which everyone presupposes that this unity of reason conforms to nature itself; and here reason does not beg but commands .. .' (B68I). The chief difficulty the realist interpretation faces is how to capture the objective remainder left untouched when we divide , the methodological view into Kant's analysis. How can we give sense to Kant's claim that reason here commands without simultaneously ascribing a constitutive role to reflective judgement-something Kant rejects outright. Systematicity is a regulative principle. The interpretative challenge is, therefore, to remain within the transcendental constraints placed on reason in the Dialectic, while establishing within these constraints the realist commitment to the viability of viewing the manifold of appearance as an intrinsically structured, systematic whole. The methodological interpretation, driven by the assertioncondition approach to truth, naturally neglects this task. The realist interpretation takes this link seriously. From the outset, the task of establishing the realist interpretation of systematicity is frustratingly underdetermined. This interpretative problem stems not so much from a lack of material, but rather from an overabundance of seemingly contradictory signals. Consider the four passages below: Judgement is compelled, for its own guidance, to adopt it as an a priori principle, that what is for human insight contingent in the particular (empirical) laws of nature contains nevertheless unity of law in the synthesis of its manifold in an intrinsically possible experience--

254

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

unfathomable, though still thinkable, as such unity may, no doubt, be for us. (C] r83-4) Now this transcendental concept of a finality of nature is neither a concept of nature nor of freedom, since it attributes nothing at all to the object, i.e., to nature, but only represents the unique mode in which we must proceed in our reflection upon "the bbjects of nature ... and so is a subjective principle, i.e. maxim of judgement. (C] 184) For if one cannot presuppose the highest purposiveness in nature a priori, i.e., as belonging to the essence of nature, then how can one be assigned to seek it out ... The regulative principle demands that systematic unity be presupposed absolutely. as a unity in nature that is recognized not only empirically but also a {)fiori, though still indeterminately, and hence as following from the essence of things. (B72I) The idea is only a heuristic, and not an ostensive conception; and it shows not how an object is constituted but how, under the guidance of the concept, we ought to seek after the constitution and connection of objects of experience in general. (B699)

These passages, two from each of the main texts, furnish some indication of how Kant, in both the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Critique of Judgment, seems to offer profoundly conflicting messages on systematicity.5 The first and third passages identify the principle of systematicity with the idea that nature is imbued, in its essential character, with unity and structure, even though we are incapable of empirically knowing this structure. Kant declares that unity is 'recognized not only empirically but also a priori . .. as following from the essence of things'. The systematicity of nature in this context appears to meet Kant's restricted sense of objectivity-relating to the constitution of the object. The competing views expressed in the second and fourth passages consign systematicity to the status of a subjective maxim, relating entirely to our interests in knowing nature. Systematicity is introduced by reason as a guide to how we 'ought to seek after theconstitution and connection of objects of experience in general' (B699). 5 Although I have offered two passages from each position, it should be noted that the view I favour, on balance, is less well represented. This is due, I believe, to the fact that Kaut's primary target in the dialectic portion of the Critique of Pure Reason is rationalism and the link it asserts between conceptual analysis and reality. It is, after all, the Critique of Pure Reason.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

255

If it has a claim to objectivity at all, it is in the diminished sense of a universally valid heuristic assumption-a device prudently deployed by reason to unify the material supplied to it by the understanding. Since this interpretative friction manifests itself within both the First and Third Critiques, it is reasonable to assume that the tension is not merely the result of a possible shift or rift between the second edition of the First Critique (1787) and the Third Critique (1790).6 One way of interpreting the litter of conflicting signals is simply to deny that Kant ever fully resolved the issue. Perhaps there is no coherent interpretation that integrates Kant's disparate commitments'? One might argue that this is understandable, given the entirely new vocabulary and framework Kant is struggling to develop. Kitcher comes dose to endorsing this view. He suggests that the 'interpretative difficulty is surely Kant's apparent wish to have things both ways: to dismiss the pretensions of reason and simultaneously to attribute to the search for unity some kind of "objective validity" '.8 A second interpretative strategy, recently revived by P. Guyer, involves presenting Kant's views in terms of an archeology of texts-the intention being to unify Kant's remarks by carefully attending to the developments and shifts that Kant's analysis undergoes between I760 and J.800. 9 6 See Guyer's remarks in the 'Introduction' to the Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 20-4, for the opposing view. Guyer sees a substantial shift from the First to the Third Critique. 7 This is to indulge in what Buchdahl has aptly called the "Kant constantly contradicts himself" club. See 'Reduction-Realization', in Kant and the Dynamics of Reason: &says on the Structure of Kant's Philosoph), (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992),93. 8 Kitchel', 'Projecting the Order of Nature', 207. In 'The Unity of Science and the Unity of Nature', Kitcher retreats somewhat from this view. As mentioned above, in this latter paper Kitchel' seeks to find an interpretation that 'will do justice to all the apparently puzzling things he [Kant) has to say about the unity of science and the unity of nature' enabling us 'to see how to reconcile his seemingly contradictory motivations' (p. 255). In this latter paper, Kitcher seems more committed to the possibility of there being a unifying story to tell. 9 See Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge; P. Guyer, 'Kant's Conception of Empirical Law: Part 1', Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 64 (1990); P. Guyer, 'Reason and Reflective Judgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity', Nous (Mar. 1990).

256

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

The defeatist orientation of both interpretative strategies should make them readings of last resort. Kitcher's "projectedunity" approach largely discounts those remarks at odds with his methodological analysis. Guyer's approach, while more respectful of the texts, unifies Kant's remarks at the cost of conceding the possibility of a genuine unified thesis. The realist interpretation developed in this chapter begins with the assumption that there is a coherent view underlying Kant's disparate commitments. This is not merely interpretative charity. It stems from the desire to pursue Kant's own lead in affirming the use value of the idea 'Of systematicity, without sacrificing the idea that the systematicity of nature relates ultimately to the structure of nature. The realist reconstruction is intended to capture both of these requirements.

5.2. SYSTEMATICITY: TWO REASONS TO REJECT THE METHODOLOGICAL VIEW Central to the realist interpretation is the belief that the requirement of the systematic unity of nature has, in a strong sense, objective significance. This puts the empirical realist interpretation, from the outset, in the precarious region between the methodological interpretation and a dangerous retreat into transcendental realism. The empirical realist wants to affirm the heuristic role of the assumption of systematicity and ascribe a kind of objectivity to the transcendental principle. To meet these twin objectives it is necessary to highlight those general aspects of Kant's account that suggest commitments beyond heuristic significance. There are two important areas of Kant's analysis that conflict with the methodological framework and open up the possibility for something more. These are: (1) the perspectival character of the constitutive/regulative dichotomy, and (2) the demand of systematicity as a precondition for the possibility of representing particular causal laws and systems of causal laws. This latter demand is connected with the conditions necessary for the possibility of an empirical criterion for truth.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

257

(r) Both realist and methodological interpreters agree that the transcendental idea of systematicity is introduced as an emphatically regulative principle of empirical knowledge. This admission alone standardly is taken as sufficient evidence for the correctness of the methodological interpretation. After all, regulative principles add nothing to the content of the cognition of the object. They simply organize what is given. What is given by the constitutive principles, on this view, is the reaL What follows from the real, by means of regulative principles, is rationally structured experience. As the transcendental principle of systematicity relates ultimately to the organization of experience, its regulative status immediately bars it from being considered objective in the restricted sense Kant reserves for the term-relating to the constitution of objects themselves. Regulative principles, on this reading, relate ultimately to what is rational and not directly to what is real. 10 Unfortunately, the clean pairing of constitutive principles with the real and regulative principles with rational belief is less straightforward than it first appears. Certainly reason has no constitutive principles of its own. It does 'not create concepts (of objects) but only orders them, and gives them that unity which they can have in their greatest possible extension .. .' (B67I). We know from the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason that the Ideas of Pure Reason are concepts of objects that transcend possible experience. The ideas are concepts whose schemata transcend the conditions, laid down in the Analytic, for the possibility of empirical objects. Consequently, when the ideas of reason are mistaken for concepts 'of certain [empirical] objects ... they are merely sophistical (dialectical) concepts' (B672). Ideas of reason employed in this manner are transcendent and delusive. Reason's legitimate role, therefore, is restricted to the material entirely supplied by the understanding. Reason 'never relates 10 The identification of the real with content and the rational with organizational structure is a common and entrenched empiricist-minded commitment. As is the case with empirical idealism, content is afforded a privileged position, with structure entering in terms of a rational organizing principle. Wilkerson is representative of this view. In Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (p. ISS) he expressly links constitutive principles to reality, and regulative principles to methodological concerns.

258

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

directly to an object, but solely to the understanding and by means of it to reason's own empirical use ... ' {B67I}. Its proper use is confined solely to the understanding 'and its purposive application ... ' (B67I). In this capacity, the concept of the Idea denotes a procedure for the unending unification of the material the understanding supplies. A2cordingly, Kant asserts that the status of the principle of systematicity is determined by its use. When used to assert the existence of a transcendent object, it has no empirical significance. When employed properly, as a rule for the extension of knowledge, it has an indispensable role: we 'take our cognition to be defective as long as it is not adequate .. .' (B673-4) to the prescribed systematicity enforced by reason. Given the restrictions Kant places on the role and status of reason, it is easy to see the attractiveness of viewing the regulative principle of systematicity as Kant's way of authorizing the affirmation of a universally necessary assumption. Its objectivity is affirmed on the basis of its indispensable role in the practice of science and the advancement of empirical knowledge generally. It is suggested, therefore, that we may affirm the objective import of the transcendental principle in the diminished sense of an objectively valid, subjective maxim. It is a necessary fiction, a 'focus imaginarius' (B672 ), universally employed in the quest to extend empirical knowledge. In the restricted sense Kant reserves for genuine objective judgements, the principle is viewed as merely subjective and regulative: it adds nothing to the content the understanding provides. The difficulty in identifying what is real with constitutive principles and what is rational with regulative principles is that the constitutive and regulative assignments are hierarchically relative. l l A regulative principle can, from a higher perspective, be viewed as making a constitutive contribution. For example, recall that the understanding itself involves both constitutive and regulative principles. The constitutive principles (Axioms 11 Although I do not intend to discuss the origins of the hierarchy argument, I think it would be interesting to examine how Kant's hierarchical analysis of cognition borrows heavily on the theological thesis concerning the Order of Being. One could argue that Kant's analysis reflects the naturalization of this principle (from spiritual to cognitive significance).

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

259

of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception) determine the nature of intuition. The regulative principles (Analogies and Postulates) determine the temporal and causal structure necessary for the representation of empirical objects by means of intuition. From the perspective of the understanding, the regulative principles contribute only the formal structure of the manifold of appearance. They contribute nothing to the content of intuition. Their contribution is restricted to the formal constraints (principally temporal) necessary for possible experience. However, notwithstanding this regulative role, from the higher perspective of reflective judgement, the regulative principles of the understanding are constitutive. Kant states unreservedly: In the Transcendental Analytic we have distinguished among the principles of the understanding the dynamical ones, as merely regulative principles of intuition, from the mathematical ones, which are constitutive in regard to intuition. Despite this, the dynamical laws we are thinking of are still constitutive in regard to experience, since they make possible a priori thc concepts without which there is no experience. (B692.)

In this passage Kant asserts that the dynamic principles are at the same time" constitutive in regard to experience". Although the Analogies are regulative from the perspective of the understanding, these same principles also can be viewed as constitutive from the higher perspective of reason (empirical knowledge). I have called this "hierarchically relative" or "perspectival" in order to stress that the regulative role of a principle may have a different character when viewed from a higher perspective. The "regulative" role of the Analogies is, in turn, the constitutive basis for the content supplied by the understanding to reflective judgement: it is constitutive of experience. The regulative and formal constraints (temporal structure) the Analogies supply become constitutive and objective (in the restricted sense) because these formal aspects are, from the higher perspective of reflective judgement, constitutive aspects necessary for the representation of appearances. Both content and form go into the making of the real as viewed from the perspective of reflective judgement.

260

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

I shall return to the importance of the perspectival character of constitutive and regulative assignment once a few more pieces of the puzzle have been put in place. For the moment I wish simply to emphasize the possibility that a regulative principle can, from a different perspectiv£? be viewed as constitutive and objective. ' (2) The connection Kant establishes between the transcendental principle of systematicity and the possibility of an empirical criterion of truth also serves to call into question the adequacy of the methodological interpretati(m. The critical thrust of Kant's argument is surprisingly modern in tone. Prefiguring, in some measure, the Kuhnian view that our judgements concerning the adequacy of hypotheses are closely linked to the broad theoretical commitments of governing theories, Kant maintains that the unity systematicity supplies as the basis for reflective judgement constitutes simultaneously the empirical framework in which we comprehend and explain phenomenon. Our ability to affirm or disconfirm local hypotheses is tied directly to the unified structure reason posits. Kant professes that it is the rational unity of reflective judgement itself that makes an empirical criterion of truth possible. He argues:

The hypothetical use of reason is therefore directed at the systematic unity of the understanding'S cognition, which, however, is the touchstone of truth for its rules. (B67S) For the law of reason to seek unity is llecessary, since without it we would have no reason, and without that, no coherent use of the understanding, and, lacking that, no sufficient mark of empirical truth; thus in regard to the latter we simply have to presuppose the systematic unity of nature as objectively valid and necessary. (B679; emphasis added)

In both of these passages Kant highlights the link between our ability to determine the truth of local hypotheses and the unified global structure of belief in which the determination is secured. Empirical theories (scientific or everyday beliefs) constitute the conceptual framework in which particular hypotheses are adjudicated. As Buchdahl suggests, reason is responsible in the Kantian system for 'creat[ing] the field in which the

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

261

hypothesis is to be tested' .12 Kitcher makes a similar point, asserting that 'The set of explanatory patterns we adopt at a given time provides a framework for our investigations, specifying which hypotheses are worth considering and which kinds of instances have probative value.'13 The postulated unity provides an abiding interpretative structure. It offers a structure that imposes constraints on what is to count as evidence for or against local hypotheses. Consider, for example, the case of the demise of the English red squirrel. Ecologists attribute this decline to the introduction of the North American grey squirrel. Apparently the grey squirrel has been displacing its red cousin because it has a slight environmental edge. It can do something the red squirrel cannot. It can digest acorns. On the basis of this small advantage we can now predict, using computer models, the eventual demise of the red squirrel. Both the manner in which the course of empirical investigation is conducted, and the structure of what counts as a viable explanation, are linked to the hierarchy of macro-level theoretical commitments. In the above case, the abiding general principle created by reason is that biological success is the product of non-random selection. We look to the activity of other animals to explain the demise of the red squirrel, as we believe that its success is constrained by the success of other organisms in the shared environment. The explanation of the demise of the red squirrels in terms of acorn consumption is considered a viable candidate for truth because the overall theory constrains possible answers. In this instance, whatever is to count as an explanation must conform to the structure imposed by the higher-order theory of natural selection. The theoretical structure natural selection furnishes provides the basis for the explanatory accounts that operate at the local level. The predictive power we enjoy at the local level follows equally from theoretical commitments. The computer models give us reasonable estimates because they encompass the macro and micro theoretical commitments of the abiding theory of interpretation. As philosophers of science have successfully 12

13

Buchdahl, Metaphysics, 510. Kitcher, 'The Unity of Science and the Unity of Nature', 267.

262

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

pointed out, explanatory and predictive success are mutually supportive aspects of good science. In this way the structures reason enforces in the creation of general empirical theories act as enabling constraints, making explanation and prediction possibleYI,y¥ithout the constraint of the higher-level commitments, nothing could count as an adequate explanation because we would have no ground for ruling out (or in) data as potential evidence. Evidence is evidential only in so far as we can connect it with the relevant hypothesis in a unique way. Acorn consumption is germane as an explanation because it fits coherently into the rational system of comprehension that makes the reduction in red-squirrel numbers intelligible. Without the enabling constraint the unity of comprehension imposes as a condition of reflective judgement, there can be no criterion for empirical truth, and therefore no explanatory or predictive power: evidence loses its evidential force. The connection Kant forges between systematicity and the possibility of an empirical criterion for truth poses a serious problem for the methodological interpretation. The methodological interpretation operates with a commitment to the determinacy of experience independent of considerations of truth. It interprets the activity of reflective judgement as a matter of filling in missing bits and extending the whole by means of theory-supported inferences. The inclusion of considerations of empirical truth, by means of theoretical commitments, enters as higher-order reflections on what is already given. The methodological interpretation-situated in the empiricist epistemic framework-begins with the idea that the contribution added by reflective judgement is an optional accessory. It is useful in the tight corners of inquiry, but not strictly necessary for a smooth and comfortable epistemic ride. Immediate experience is viewed as self-sufficient and determinate. Hence Guyer's claim that 'the categories themselves, it seems, furnish both a guarantee that we can discover empirical laws applying to any empirical intuitions and all the method we need to discover these laws. '15 14 To my knowledge, the notion of an "enabling constraint" is first developed in Nagel, The Structure of Experience. 15 Guyer, 'Kant's Conception', 224.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

263

This interpretation is unsatisfactory. As we saw in Chapters 2 and 3, without implicit considerations of truth, there can be no immediate experiential judgements. Where truth is not at stake, it makes no sense to regard immediate, "inner" experience as determinate. Experiential object statements like "1 am currently seeing a squirrel", or reports of the sensory character of object reports such as "I am currently experiencing a small grey patch in my sensory field" occur with a general truth structure in place. Thus, if the systematicity of reason is a precondition for the possibility of unified interpretative frameworks, and if interpretative frameworks are necessary for the possibility of an empirical criterion of truth, then it makes no sense to continue (as many empiricists do) to attribute determinacy to the manifold of appearance independent of the truth contribution we find represented explicitly in reflective judgement. No doubt, if the understanding is thought to supply a sufficient basis for the crude, uneven, pre-reflective representation of objects and events, with reflective judgement merely tightening up the material and furthering investigation,16 then it makes a good deal of sense to consider the understanding as supplying a "guarantee" and "method" for discovering cmpirical lawlike regularities. Yet if, as suggested above, the principle of systematicity contributes something beyond a heuristic role in the process of comprehension, perhaps even constituting an additional precondition for the unity of empirical knowledge itself, then the methodological interpretation of this transcendental principle is seriously undermined. To oversimplify somewhat, we might say that the material spontaneous representation supplies (immediate experience) becomes empirical knowledge only when the structure of comprehension enforces the demand of systematic rational unity upon it. 16 S. Palmquist, 'Knowledge and Experience', Kant-Studien, 78 (1987), is a good example of the methodological way of viewing the relation between experience and empirical knowledge. He suggests that 'determinate judgment is the act by which immediate experience is converted into empirical knowledge; and reflective judgment is the act by which empirical knowledge becomes reflective knowledge' (p. 184). Palmquist's claim that 'reflective experience attempts to give elegance to its inevitably vulgar counterpart, nonreflective experience' (p. 185) typifies this bottom-up, constructivist approach.

264

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

The standard bifurcation of immediate experience (assumed to be exclusively the product of the understanding) and empirical knowledge (the product of reflective judgement) is misleading. The connection between immediate experience and empirical knowledge will be djscussedb~lgw (Section 5.4). At this stage, I wish merely to introduce the somewhat unorthodox view that conscious experience has, in addition to the constraints imposed by the understanding, the further requirement that it suppJies the necessary material to provide for the application of the unity of transcendental systematicity, and that this is a (further) condition of its possibility.17 The following passage from the first Critique expresses, in embryo, the spirit of that dependency: If among the appearances offering themselves to us there were such a great variety . . . that even the most acute human understanding, through comparison of one with another, could not detect the least similarity (a case which can at least be thought), then the logical law of genera would not obtain at all, no concept of a genus, nor any other universal concept, indeed no understanding at all would obtain, since it is the understanding that has to do with such concepts. (B68r-2)

The representation of determinate spontaneous experience (concept application) necessitates considerations of truth if its pure and empirical concepts are to be deployed. This requires the involvement of a criterion of truth: a sense of when it is correct or incorrect to deploy particular concepts. While the judgement of correctness takes place at the reflective level, the basis for the relevant comparison must have already been laid down by the understanding. In the absence of this, as Kant suggests above, reflective judgement would be unable to find sufficient similarities to impose its transcendental unity upon the material delivered by the understanding, and the activity of the understanding itself would then be impossible. There is, therefore, a crucial connection between the activity of judgement in its spontaneous mode, and in its reflective capacity. As 17 I hesitate to describe my interpretation of the relation between spontaneous and reflective judgement as entirely unorthodox. Much of the secondary .literature focuses on trying to find some way of integrating the two. My reading follows this general pattern. I treat the cases as two manifestations of the singular and fundamental role of judgement.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

265

Kant rather famously states: 'we ourselves bring into the appearances that order and regularity in them that we call Nature, and moreover we would not be able to find it there if we ... had not originally put it there' (AI25). It would thus be wrong to think, as the methodological interpretation invites, that one can separate cleanly the role and products of the understanding from reflective judgement. Although I have yet to detail how Kant develops the argument, the connection he intends for it plainly suggests a fundamental role for reflective judgement-a role that is foreign to the empiricist-minded methodological interpretation. Individually, either of these general objections represents a major hurdle for the methodological interpretation. The hierarchical character of the constitutive/regulative pairings challenges the uncritical move from regulative use to method(ological status. The requirement of systematicity as a condition for empirical truth betrays a further weakness in the method; ological interpretation. The separation of judgement in its spontaneous and reflective mode is not as clean as the methodological interpretation suggests. The transcendental principle of systematicity involves commitments that appear to transcend the limits of what the methodological interpretation genuinely can accommodate. 18 Of interest to the realist interpretation is the critical remainder left undeveloped by the methodological interpretation. I have argued that the Kantian analysis requires a fuller sense of "objectivity" than the notion of a universally valid subjective maxim permits. The strategy for explicating this critical remainder centres on exploring the consistent guiding thread Kant offers to the non-methodological interpretation. As discussed in the Analytic, empirical realism requires that we view nature as internally unified in accordance with a principle of intrinsic organization, even though this unity cannot be empirically explained, realized, or known. As Kant suggests: 18 By drawing into question the viability of the methodological interpretation, I do not intend to discount Kant's overwhelming commitment to systematicity as an indispensable regulative principle that indicates 'how, under the guidance of that concept, we ought to seek after the constitution and connection of objects of experience in general' (B699). That much of the principle I take to be self-evident.

266

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

Judgment is compelled, for its own guidance, to adopt it as an a priori principle, that what is for human insight contingent in the particular (empirical) laws of nature contains nevertheless unity of lawin the synthesis of its manifold in an intrinsically possible experience-unfathomable, though still thinkable, as such unity; may, no doubt, be for us. (C] I83-4)

And again: These laws, being empirical, may be contingent as far as the light of our understanding goes, but still, if they are to be called laws, (as the concept of nature requires), they must be regarded as necessary on a principle, unknown though it be to us, or the unity of the manifold. (C] I79-8o)

The interpretative challenge for the realist analysis thus consists in assessing this higher, unfathomable, unity in its role as sustaining the onto logically independent empirical domain. The argument below is developed along the following lines. I first introduce Kant's account of the unity of reason. This discussion traces the origin of reason's unity and distinguishes it from the role of unity imposed by the understanding. In the second section I respond to an empiricist challenge to the unity of reason. This objection focuses on the disparity between what experience reveals by means of induction, and the transcendental requirement of true lawfulness in a complete system of explanation. In the following section I detail Kant's arguments connecting the unity of reason with the unity of nature. In the final section I argue that there is a twoway dependency between immediate experience and empirical knowledge: between the roles of spontaneous and reflective judgement.

5-3- THE UNITY OF REASON Kant maintains that 'the unity of reason is the unity of a system .. .' (B708). Systematicity is the defining feature of pure reason. This identification involves two related features: (r) the structure that underlies every system of empirical knowledge is viewed as the product of the unity of reason, and (2) the unity

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

267

of reason is an original contribution, not itself derived from the material supplied by the understanding. Let us examine the latter feature first. This claim is intended to highlight the a priori character of the logical forms of judgement. In the sphere of pure reason, the forms of judgement, unlike their sensible expression through the understanding, have unlimited scope. Judgements of reason are unconstrained by experiential considerations. The nomological force of logical connectives is plainly not a function of experience. We do not become more certain of the validity of the argument "If A then B, A, therefore B" the more times experience conforms to this pattern. On the contrary, as discussed in the Analytic, the schematized forms of judgement are themselves the conditions for the experience itself. Kant maintains that the systematic character of reason as it relates to our comprehension of nature is guided by three principles: homogeneity, specification, and continuity (B686). These principles express the basic forms of analysis reflective judgement deploys in its interrogation of nature. The first principle encourages us always to view particulars as parts of larger wholes. This principle invites us to regard individuals as sharing common features, directing us upwards to higher governing concepts. The structure of comprehension involves the continually expanding inclusion of low-level phenomena under more general principles of organization. The contemporary quest for a grand unifying theory in the hard sciences (within and between physics, chemistry, and biology) is the latest expression of this drive. The second principle encourages us to view current particulars as aggregates that are subject to further analysis and decomposition. Specification thus instructs us to treat given particulars as involving variety not yet discovered. Comprehension requires that we never he satisfied with the level of specification currently enjoyed. The principle of continuity, like the third category in each of the four sets of principles in the understanding, is a combination of the preceding two. This principle, which is the principle of systematicity simpliciter, has no distinctive role in the activity of inquiry itself. It demands rather that we regard the

268

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

systematic connection as complete as we are 'ascending to higher genera, as well as descending to lower species . . .' (B686). It expresses the requirement that the movement from either lower-to-higher or higher-to-Iower concepts is grounded in an abiding unity in which 'all rrianifolds are akin one to another, because they are all collectively descended, through every degree of extended determination, from a single highest genus' (B686). These three principles are reason's tools for interrogating nature. In the case of reflective judgement, Kant's point is simply that the unity that reason seeks to establish over the material supplied to it by the understanding is grounded ultimately in the nature of reason itself. They are not borrowed from experience. As Kant suggests: The reflective judgement which is compelled to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal, stands, therefore, in need of a principle. This principle it cannot borrow from experience, because what it has to do is to establish just the unity of all empirical principles under higher, though likewise empirical, principles, and hence the possibility of the systematic subordination of higher and lower. Such a transcendental principle, therefore, the reflective judgement can only give as a law from and to itself. (C] ISO)'

Here Kant notes that the structure that underlies all empirical theories (scientific or everyday maxims), and constitutes their unitary form, is exclusively the product of reason. This connects Principles I and 2 above. The hierarchical classifications of axioms, causal laws, and higher-order principles in physics; the classifications of subspecies, species, and genus in biology; or the more mundane and modest empirical theories we employ in our day-to-day traffic with the worldthe fastest route home, the best place for the radio antenna on windy days-are all examples of the empirical systems whose underlying rational structure Kant assigns to the faculty of rational comprehension. It is in this way that the unification that reflective judgement invests in the material of experience is connected exclusively to the structure of reason itself: 'Pure reason is in fact occupied with nothing but itself and can have no other concern, because what is given to it is not objects to be unified for the concepts of experience, but cognitions of the

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

269

understanding to be unified for the concepts of reason, i.e., to be connected in one principle' (B708). Having assigned the origin and structure of the unity of reflective judgement (rational unity) exclusively to reason, Kant expressly separates the unity that makes comprehension possible from the unity that informs spontaneous representation. Drawing again on the hierarchical character of his analysis of intuition, understanding, and reason, Kant asserts that the unity and structure of empirical knowledge, secured with the aid of transcendental ideas, is essentially different from the unity the understanding supplies. As reflective judgement is concerned with assigning particular laws, and systems of laws, to experience, its unity 'may be called "the unity of reason" " which 'is of an altogether different kind than any unity that can be achieved by the understanding' (B359). The rational unity of reflective judgement differs from the unity of the understanding in two ways. Qualitatively its activity is distinct because, as we have seen, reason has no constitutive principles of its own. The empirical employment of reflective judgement requires already given objects from the understanding. The two are also distinct in the degree of structure they impart to the manifold of appearance. The understanding determines immediate experience in conformity with the conditions it lays down for the possibility of experience. As has been characterized, this involves an appeal to an implicit general truth structure. Reflective judgement, by contrast, is not limited to immediate representation and the constraints of possible experience. 19 Reflective judgement concerns the systematic structure of empirical knowledge as a whole. This structure is constrained only by the field of explicitly stated truth-conditions. The unity reason enforces over the material supplied by the understanding thus extends beyond what actual (present and temporally idealized inquiry) experience can reveal: 19 It should be noted that the distinction I am introducing between understanding and rational comprehension is meant to acknowledge the dichotomy between judgement in its spontaneous and reflective modes. In what follows I show why the alleged rigid distinction between these two modes of judgement is less severe than is generally thought.

270

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

The term 'a concept of reason', however, already shows in a provisional way that such a concept will not let itself be limited to experience ... no actual experience is fully sufficient for it, but every experience belongs to it. Concepts of reason serve for comprehension, just as concepts of the understanding serve for understanding (of perceptions). (B367)

Rational comprehension is more extensive in range· than spontaneous understanding. Kant's analysis of rational unity requires that for every part of immediate experience there be conditions (empirically known or unknown) that determine its place in the order of the whole. As Kant writes: This unity of reason always presupposes an idea, namely that of the form of a whole of cognition, which precedes the determinate cognition of the parts and contains the conditions for determining a 1)1'io1'i the place of each part and its relation to the others. Accordingly, this idea postulates complete unity of the understanding's cognition, through which this cognition comes to be not merely a contingent aggregate but a system interconnected in accordance with necessary laws. (B673)

Rational unity does not anticipate the content of experience. It does anticipate the structure in which content is assimilated. Rational unity therefore prescribes a whole that is prior to the determinate knowledge of the parts-accomplishing this task by means of an a priori structure that has room for every part and its relation to all other parts. Empirical knowledge thus presupposes, in the deployment of its concepts, the rational unity of comprehension: a unity that 'goes much further than experience can reach' (B690). Kant is not arguing that we know how nature is intrinsically unified. He is asserting merely that nature is intrinsically unified: The comets show an even greater variety in their paths, since (as far as observation reaches) they do not ever return in a circle; yet we guess at a parabolic course for them, since it is still akin to the ellipse ... Thus under the guidance of those principles we come to a unity of genera in the forms of these paths, but thereby also further to unity in the cause of all the laws of this motion (gravitation); from there we extend our conquests, seeking to explain all variations and apparent deviations from those rules on the basis of the same principle; finally we even add on more than experience can ever confirm, namely in accordance with

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

27I

the rules of affinity, even conceiving hyperbolical paths for comets in which these bodies leave OlIr solar system entirely. .. (B69I; emphasis added)

The extension of possible empirical knowledge by means of the structure of rational unity-beyond what "experience can ever confirm"-mirrors the truth-condition account of truth presented in the preceding section. The systematidty of reason is not subject to the constraints of what mere idealized inquiry can provide. The unity of reason, in the above example, posits the unique trajectory of comets even though our experience of comets may never allow for an experience of the assigned trajectory. We posit their hyperbolic path on the basis of other lateral knowledge we have of the elliptical orbits of the planets. We could, of course, add many modern cases to Kant's examples. The range of subatomic particles is sustained largely by 'inferences from observed phenomena. At the other end of the spectrum, theories about the existence of black holes make sense only in tllt' context of our theories about gravity and mass. There is still no conclusive evidence that confirms the independent existence of black holes. Similarly, our conjectures about the character of the universe-whether it will continue to expand forever or whether gravity wilI overcome its expansive force-are firmly ensconced in theory dependent claims. It is reasonable to assert, therefore, that the Kantian analysis of the role of the unity of nature (systematidty) extends the range of genuine comprehension beyond the scope of experientially grounded warranted assertibility. Comprehension (reflective judgement) is more expansive than what experience (spontaneous judgement) can deliver.

5+ DEFUSING AN EMPIRICIST CHALLENGE The connection between systematicity and rational unity establishes the first link in Kant's overall argument. It explains why systematicity figures at all in the analysis of comprehension. But, before shifting to the question of how we move from this claim to the general principle that nature must be viewed as a systematic, imrinsicaIly structured whole, we need first to

272

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

address the tension that emerges between transcendental and empirical perspectives on systematicity. Accepting the Kantian claim that comprehension is systematic in character introduces the problem of why it is that experience never approaches this unity. As Walker suggests, the tension between the transcendental requirement of systematicity and the inductive nature of empirical judgements, while not necessarily bringing 'transcendental idealism down' , seems to throw into question the viability of asserting this transcendental unity when experience can offer 'no guarantee that there is any overall unity to be found'.20 The tension between the a priori "nature of the principle of systematicity and the a posteriori character of all empirical judgements is an enduring feature of Kant's system. It reemerges frequently in many contexts of Kant's philosophy. For immediate purposes, the pertinent question is whether the disparity between the transcendental and empirical perspectives constitutes a serious obstacle to the cogency of the assertion of systematicity. Is the lack of an empirical "guarantee" a significant problem? There are three reasons for believing that it is not. First, it is important to keep in mind that the principle of systematicity is intended as a transcendental claim. It is developed in accordance with Kant's view that the identification of lawlike regularities demands the assumption of an intrinsic order in nature. 2l Kant's argument asserts that, without the assumption of real lawfulness (necessity) in nature (both between laws and within 'laws'), there can be no cognizable lawlike order attributed to nature at all: 'Although the understanding can determine nothing a priori in respect of such laws (qua empirical objects), it must, in order to trace out these empirical laws (qua laws), place at the basis of all reflection upon the latter an a priori principle, viz, that a cognisable order of nature is possible in accordance with these laws' (C] I85).22 The systematic causal nexus that empirical systems prescribe is viewed as a function of the requirement of the systematicity 20 Ralph Walker, 'Kant's Conception of Empirical Law: Part II', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 64 (I990), 2.,56. 21 Kant's argument for this claim is examined in greater detail in Section 5.5. 22 Buchdahl's translation. See Metaphysics, 5I7.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

273

that the rational unity of reason necessarily imparts. The point can be put more powerfully by extending the force of Buchdahl's earlier claim. It is not merely the case that reason "creates the field in which hypotheses are to be tested". Reason creates the representational field in which lawlike regularities first emerge as lawlike regularities. For something to be reflectively entertained by judgement at all, real or imagined, it must form part of the intelligible, rational, and therefore causally structured, order. That experience never yields confirmation of this unity is not an indictment of the transcendental claim. Why should we expect that it would? The inductivist's concern over the requirement of a "guarantee" between perspectives fails in the same way that Guyer's claim fails with respect to the idea that the categories furnish a guarantee and method for discovering empirricallaws. 23 The immediate cognition of a boat going up-stream does not require that we know a causal law. The understanding provides the a priori conditions merely for the discrimination of the relevant event. Similarly, reflection on how boats manage to make it up-stream also offers no guarantee that we will find the causal condition(s} that make this possible. What is claimed is that there is a lawful, causal relation among appearances; not that we can discover that relation. Empirical realism neither offers, nor requires, such guarantees. The requirement of systematicity is tied to the conditions for the possibility of empirical knowledge, not to the capacity of actually finding confirmation of systematicity in experience. The second response queries an implicit assumption evident in the inductivist challenge. This assumption enforces a connection between the partial character of our knowledge of nature, and the (false) inference that this knowledge licenses the assertion that nature itself involves mere lawlike regularities. The contention that the inescapable existence of gaps in the observed unity of nature (both within laws and between laws), due to the necessarily inductive character of empirical knowledge, is equivalent to the empirical knowledge of real gaps in nature is mistaken. The assertion suffers from the same 23

Guyer, 'Kant's Conception', 224.

274

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

weakness Kant locates in Hume's deficient argument against causality: that 'he therefore falsely inferred from the contingency of our determination in accordance with the law, the contingency of the law itself . . .' (B794). The absence of evidence for lawfulness is not evidence of the omission of lawfulness. The lack of unity apparent at the empirical level does not directly challenge the viability of the transcendental claim. From the Kantian perspective, the partial and inductive character of empirical knowledge is viewed as indicating unfilled regions, rather than actual breaks, in the unity of the manifold of appearances. Anything "outside" of what experience has yet to reveal must be viewed as not yet classified: hidden truths. If the unity of the manifold allowed for genuine exceptions that were not themselves subject to some higher (unknown) principle of unification, as would be the case if real gaps in unity were admitted, then the rational character of comprehension (and the unity of the understanding) would be relinquished. It is the denial of this possibility that stands behind Kant's assertion that 'this unity of reason always presupposes an idea, namely that of the form of a whole of cognition, which precedes the determinate cognition of the parts and contains the conditions for determining a priori the place of each part and its relation to the others' (B673). The final reason for resisting the inductivist charge centres on a deep disagreement over the epistemic framework from which the objection is launched. The general problem, as Walker rightly describes it, revolves around the tension between the transcendental requirement of the assumption of the systematicity of nature, and the fact that the' "empirical laws" which we find in experience are only "contingent" '.24 On the one hand, Kant seems intent on securing a cast-iron connection between cognition and nature via the transcendental principle. On the other, he admits an a posteriori element that continually frustrates the transcendental requirement. The disparity between these two aspects of Kant's system is tied, on Walker's reading, to the epistemic independence of sensation. Sensation 24

Walker, 'Kant's Conception', 244.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

275

is viewed as the 'independent determinant of truth in the world of appearances, a point of contact with things as they are in themselves' .25 Sensation as the a posteriori aspect of experience thwarts the possibility of our ever having the kind of causal laws that, with certainty, can predict what sensations we will experience in the future. Empirical realism thus seems to pull us in conflicting directions. As I havedenied that sensation occupies the kind of intermediary role assigned to it in the above argument, part of the response to the inductivist challenge involves a repudiation of the epistemological approach in which the worry is expressed. The mere contingent character of the empirical laws we identify in experience is not the result of an entirely unconstrained given that we cannot anticipate. Of course it is correct to point out that, at the empirical level, the lawfulness we assign to phenomena is never more than lawlikeness. Kant offers no guarantee that the constant conjunction of states we currently observe can be projected into the future with certainty. Kant, like Hume, operates with an equally firm commitment to the idea that the warrants for our causal assignments are only as good as the inductive evidence we have for them. This is as valid for day-to-day experiential judgements as for high-level judgements of science: 'in natural science there are an infinity of conjectures in regard to which certainty can never be expected, because natural appearances are objects that are given to us independently of our concepts, to which, therefore, the key lies not in us and in our pure thinking, but outside us, and for this reason in many cases it is not found .. .' (B 5°8). Empirical lawlike connections can approach universality, but, at the empirical level, can never be regarded as universal. Since human cognition is discursive in character, there always remains the particular, which 'as such contains something contingent in regard to the universal' (C] 404). But particularity does not stand radically outside the sphere of judgement as the empiricist interpretation suggests. Unlike Hume, Kant does not attribute the contingency of particularity to bare sensation, or to our inability to "know" what sensations 25

Ibid. 256.

276

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

will emerge in the future. 26 On the Priority-of-Judgement interpretation, bare sensation has no direct belief-determining role, even in the present. Sensation has a role within the representation context, not epistemically prior to it. The correct way of stating the contingency problem is to claim that we do not know what will happen in the future. We do not know what objects and events tomorrow will bring. What saves this fornlUlation from being a mere platitude is the attention it directs to the object-involving character of the contingency of experience. To describe the problem in terms of naked sensation, as "a point of contact with things as they are in themselves", is to stay within the Cartesian epistemic model: to remain committed to the idea that bare sensation constrains and informs belief independent of considerations of truth and reference. If we accept instead the idea that determinate inner content requires truth and reference as a condition for the original discrimination of empirical lawlike regularities, then the mere partial unity that experience exhibits does not threaten to compromise empirical realism as the inductivist believes. On the contrary, it is what we should expect, given the role of particularity for any discursive form of understanding. I grant that redescribing the problem in terms of the unknown character of future experience does not resolve fully the tension between transcendental and empirical perspectives. More needs to be said to explain why future experience is so full of surprises. 27 What it does do is calm the fear that the disparity between the transcendental and empirical perspectives disrupts Kant's claim that nature has an intrinsic structure. 26 It is natural that empiricist-minded interpreters should place the contingency of particularity in sensation. On their view, this is precisely the external (informative) feed to the cognitive system. 27 The direction to be explored should be thought of in terms of why future experience is not entirely unconstrained in the way the sensation-model implies. Since unity-in-the-object is a precondition for representation, and as this reference relation operates under holistic truth-considerations, it should be possible to discuss why considerations of truth operate as general eonstraints on future experience: i.e. that we can discriminate what experience reveals more finely as our general truth-structUl'e becomes more fine-grained. Surprises, on this view, will always have a bearing on the overall truth-structure; perhaps on the fringe rather than at the centre--although some of the more interesting surprises in science have involved altering core beliefs in unexpected ways.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

277

5.5. THE UNITY OF COMPREHENSION AND THE UNITY OF NATURE The requirement that comprehension is determined in conformity with the complete systematicity of reflective judgement does not, of itself, solve the problem concerning what kind of objectivity to assign to the regulative idea of nature as an intrinsically unified whole. We need to establish how Kant connects the systematic structure of comprehension with the requirement that we treat nature as an intrinsically structured whole. As we saw in the last section, Kant maintains that the systematic character of comprehension involves three principles: homogeneity, specification, and continuity (B686). These principles express the basic forms of investigation that reflective judgement deploys in coming to know nature. The principle of 'homogeneity instructs us to view particulars as parts of larger ;Wholes. Particular classifications are viewed as sharing marks that allow for higher grouping, thus directing us upwards to more general concepts. The second principle encourages us to view current particulars as subject to further dissection. Specification instructs us to consider given particulars as containing variety not yet discovered. The principle of continuity combines the preceding two. This principle demands rather that we regard systematicity as complete whenever inquiry investigates 'higher genera, as well [as] descending to lower species ... ' (B686). The movement, in either direction (species to genera or genera to species) is rooted in a highest unity in which 'all manifolds are akin one to another, because they are all collectively descended, through every degree of extended determination, from a single highest genus' (B686). This third principle, the principle of continuity, is the bridge between the rational unity of comprehension and the structure of nature itself. Nature, Kant asserts, must be viewed in such a way that 'there are no different original and primary genera, which would be, as it were, isolated and separated from one another ... but rather all the manifold genera are only partitionings of a single supreme and universal genus and from this principle its immediate consequence: datur continuum {romarum ... ' (B68?).

278

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

In the above passage Kant is asserting that the two-way power of comprehension contained in the genera/species division, reflecting as it does the basic structure of judgement (of subsumption), involves the parallel demand that we regard nature as itself governed by a unifying highest principle as a condition for the operation of compreheilsion. We come to know nature on the assumption that it conforms to the structure and unity of reason. Kant writes that 'one can see clearly that the laws judge the parsimony of fundamental causes, the manifoldness of effects, and the consequent affinity of the members of nature in themselves reasonably and in conformity with nature, and these principles therefore carry their recommendation directly in themselves, and not merely as methodological devices' (B689). This intrinsic unity in nature is, from the empirical perspective, 'unfathomable' and beyond what 'experience can ever provide'. Nonetheless, Kant maintains that the requirement stands as a condition for the possibility of rational comprehensIon. The immediate question that arises is why we should endorse this mysterious union between the structure of comprehension and the structure of nature. Has not Kant made a move that he is not really entitled to make given the regulative character of systematicity? The methodological interpreter will question why the objective structure of nature must conform to the structure of comprehension. What grounds this cosmic coincidence? One way of viewing Kant's response is in terms of contemporary proof-theoretic considerations. If a condition of empirical knowledge (as we find in science, for example) demands a unified structure that classifies and orders the varied set of empirical laws that form, by means of the system, a deductivenomological theoretical structure, then the logical connections between laws (lateral and hierarchical) have nomological force automatically. Low-level empirical laws are derived from highlevel laws. We can readily see, in this sense, how the necessity attributed between laws is immediately bound to the nomological necessity that the logical connectives of the interpretative system enforce.

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

279

While Kant does not develop his analysis in terms of the covering-law model, the arguments he establishes concerning the comprehension of nature in terms of genera and species fit neatly into this contemporary pattern. Kant, it may seem, seeks to rest the transcendental systematicity argument on considerations concerning the theoretical structures judgement introduces in our attempts to comprehend nature. The connection between the unity of comprehension and the unity of nature is therefore a necessary feature of our reflective knowledge of nature. This interpretation, while certainly appealing, captures only half the real argument. The Kantian analysis, while including the above case, is more general. The connection between mind and nature is an essential aspect of all knowledge, not merely complex theoretical knowledge. The argument connecting the structure of comprehension with the structure of nature springs from the same theme that the Copernican revolution announces in the arguments developed for the understanding. On the 'r
C

it [judgement] must, in pursuit of such empirical so-called laws, lay at the basis of all reflection upon them an a priori principle, to the effect, namely, that a cognizable order of nature is possible according to them.

)

280

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

A principle of this kind is expressed in the following propositions. There is in nature a subordination of genera and species comprehensible by us: Each of these genera again approximate to the others on a common principle, so that a transition may be possible from one to the other, and thereby to a higher genus: While it seems at the outset unavoidable for our [form of] understanding to assume for the specific variety of natural operations a like number of various kinds of causality, yet these may all be reduced to a small number of principles, the quest for which is our business. .. (C] r85; emphasis added)

Central to the Kantian analysis is the claim that, without the two-way structure of comprehension b.eing viewed as reflecting the intrinsic structures of nature, knowledge of an 'order of nature in accordance with empirical laws' (C] I8S) would be impossible. The comprehension of nature in terms of the reduction of its manifoldness to ever smaller sets of general governing principles presupposes that "there is in nature a subordination of genera and species comprehensible by us". As Kant states, in relation to the unification of phenomenon rendered by science in his day: The analysts had already done much when they were able to reduce all salts to two main genera, acidic and alkaline, but they even attempted to regard this distinction as merely a variety or varied expression of one and the same fundamental material. They sought to get the several species of earths (the material of stone and even of metal) gradually down to three, and finally to two; still not satisfied, they could not dismiss from their thought the conjecture that behind these varieties there is a single genus or even indeed a common principle for both earths and salts. (B68o-I)

Commenting on whether this relation between the structure of comprehension and the structure of nature is not a mere methodological maxim intended to aid in the increase of empirical knowledge, Kant makes it clear that such 'a selfish aim can easily be distinguished from the idea, in accordance with which everyone presupposes that this unity of reason conforms to nature itself; and here reason does not beg but commands .. .' (B68r). The systematicity of comprehension and the systematicity of nature are thus welded together on the basis of the priority Kant assigns to the holistic character of judgement and comprehension. This mirrors the requirement for a unified

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

28I

truth-structure as the condition for judgement in its spontaneous (the understanding) role. The requirement of unity in the manifold of appearance reaches directly to the core of the Kantian analysis in both halves of the Critique. Contrary to the methodological interpretation in which we treat nature merely as ifit were intrinsically unified, Kant maintains that the unity comprehension imposes as a condition of its application requires a real, parallel unity in nature. This, as previously mentioned, leads Kant to claim that 'one can see clearly that the laws judge the parsimony of fundamental causes, the manifoldness of effects, and the consequent affinity of the members of nature in themselves reasonably and in conformity with nature, and these principles therefore carry their recommendation directly in themselves, and not merely as methodological devices' (B689). The methodological interpretative challenge fails because it begins with a background commitment to the transcendental realist framework: a commitment to the idea that the structure ~f nature is (or could be) radically independent of the structure of cognition. This is what motivates the "cosmic-coincidence" charge. On the Kantian formulation, this charge is senseless. Empirical realism denies the intelligibility of the original bifurcation of comprehension and nature. The priority Kant assigns to judgement precludes the possibility of representing selfidentified events or objects unconnected to the rational unity that serves as the basis for their cognition. The conception of nature as an intelligible whole independent of the structure of judgement proceeds on the false, transcendental realist, assumption that we could meaningfully represent nature's intelIigible character (its internal structure) independently of our mode of rationality and comprehension. In stimmary, the methodological interpreter effectively stacks the deck against the empirical realist. He treats nature as if it is systematically structured in order to facilitate a more thorough knowledge of it, while attempting to remain ontologically non-committal on the issue of whether nature actually is an intrinsically unified whole. This interpretative agnosticism is misplaced. The regulative assumption of the systematicity of nature serves as a transcendental precondition for the

282

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

possibility of comprehension. The methodological interpreter believes that we can, and should, stop short of going all the way. This signals a failure fully to appreciate that, without a commitment to the real (as opposed to merely rational) systematic intrinsic unity of nature, reflective judgement has no application at all.

5.6. EXPERIENCE AND EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE It may be objected that the epistemic cost of the above response to the inductivist and methodological interpretation is too dear. By arguing that the original identification of regularities is secured by reflective judgement, is the realist interpretation guilty of conflating the role of reflective judgement with the role of the understanding? In consolidating the strong realist interpretation, have I confused immediate experience with reflective knowledge? One might prefer to agree to the weaker claim that a condition of the application of reflective judgement involves the transcendental demand of systematicity, without endorsing the stronger claim that without the poisibility of the systematicity of reflective judgement there can be no access to vulgar, immediate experience. The realist interpretation, it should be observed, does not challenge the interpretation of the understanding as offering the transcendental constraints necessary for the possibility of experience. Nor does it reject the view that Kant's treatment of reflective judgement applies to the types of high-level theoretical commitments necessary for the possibility of scientific knowledge. The basis for the stronger claim centres on the contention that our knowledge of everyday matters in immediate experience also entails the requirement of positing a unity in experiential knowledge that makes it amenable to the unity reason enforces over the understanding. By establishing a role for the transcendental principle as an ancillary condition for the possibility of immediate experience, I am claiming a common theoretical bond between Kant's account of judgement in its spontaneous and reflective capacities.

.J

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

283

The plausibility of this view hinges on the recognition that Kant's account of representation is guided by holistic considerations of belief. It was demonstrated in Chapter 2 that Kant anticipates the contemporary shift away from sense-datum theories of cognition. The emergence, and validity, of particular beliefs are tied to the collective force of the body of belief. Sensation, while having a causal role within the representational context, offers no primitive epistemic point of contact with the manifold of appearances. We discriminate objects and events in the world on the basis of what counts as objective evidence for our beliefs. This requires considerations of truth. Sensations and intuitions are not vehicles for truth-values; beliefs are. The belief-centred holism that informs the basis of Kant's account of representation plays an important part in how we ,interpret Kant's account of the role of systematicity in reflective judgement. The standard (empiricist-inspired) methodological Niew considers the product of spontaneous understanding to be determinate, independent of the structure of reflective judgement-reflective judgement merely adding clarity to a field of representation that is independent of this later act of unification. The crucial link between understanding and reflective judgement on the Priority-of-Judgement view is between the determination of belief and the requirement of truth. The role of the general truth structure was developed as a way of highlighting the role of judgement, and its object-involving conditions, as the fundamental basis for the possibility of representation. Our ability to assert, defend, and. dismiss immediate experiential beliefs (from subject-centred beliefs like "I am currently seeing a green patch in my visual field" to immediate intersubjective judgements like "I recognize the man across the square as my friend Bill") involves considerations of truth. I am in a position to know what I experience because of the extensive truthconstrained belief framework, a framework that is inherently amenable to reflections on its rational structure. In spontaneous representation, most of these judgements are automatic. We say we do them "almost without thinking". Moreover, what was once a conscious reflective process, can,

i i

=

284

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

with practice, become an immediate, spontaneous judgement. The boundary between spontaneous understanding and reflective knowledge is permeable. The central lesson of the Priorityof-Judgement interpretation is that in both cases we must view judgement, and therefore considerations of truth, to be hard at work. Since the unity of comprehension is the precondition for the possibility of an empirical criterion of truth, it would be wrong to think, as the methodological interpretation encourages, that we have some type of immediate, "vulgar" experience that is subsequently subject to the truth-bestowing activity of reason. Kant maintains that the distinctions between truth and falsity are viable only on the condition that a criterion, created from reason itself, is deployed: 'For the law of reason to seek unity is necessary, since without it we would have no reason, and without that, no coherent use of the understanding, and, lacking that, no sufficient mark of empirical truth ... " (B679). By renouncing the possibility of empirical truth obtaining independently of the infusion of systematicity from comprehension to the structure of nature, Kant is effectively denying that the unity of experience supplied by the understanding is itself sufficient for the individuation of particular lawlike regularities. In other words, without the systematicity that reason imparts in the act of comprehension, the understanding has no "consistent and self-accordant" employment. The distinct unity of reasonand the constraint it imposes on the conception of nature-is in this sense a condition for the possibility of experience as experience-that is, as experience subject to the first flush of comprehension. This, as we have seen, leads Kant to claim that: If among the appearances offering themselves to us there were such a great variety . . . that even the most acute human understanding, through comparison of one with another, could not detect the least similarity (a case which can at least be thought), then the logical law of genera would not obtain at all, no concept of a genus, nor any other universal concept, indeed no understanding at all would obtain, since it is the understanding that has to do with such concepts. (B68r-2)

A reasonable way of viewing Kant's position is to regard the experiential and higher-order scientific claims as equally involv-

1 Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

285

ing a contribution from reason. Both are constrained by the rational unity of comprehension. Kant's claim that there can be no empirical criterion of truth without the systematicity reflective judgement enforces dovetails neatly with this interpretation. Without the systematic unity of comprehension, and the parallel unity of nature, there can be no empirical criterion for truth. Where there is no empirical criterion for truth, truth is not at stake. Where truth is not at stake, it is nonsense to invoke the notion of an implicit general truth-structure operating at the level of spontaneous judgement (the understanding). And finally, without the world involving character of judgement enforced by an implicit truth-structure, even sensation is, as Kant repeatedly states, "nothing to us". The ptoblem, as conceived by the empiricist, concerns why Kant thinks well-confirmed lawlike regularities must be viewed as reflectIng a higher-order unity of nature itself. Reflective judgement is (mistakenly) considered as an important but, strictly speaking, ornamental extra. It fits somewhat uncomfortably on the body of Kant's real analysis of experience, which is in the Analytic. I recommend that the response to the pragmatist/methodological interpretation be directed against the empiricist assumption that regularities are simply given in spontaneous representation independent of the conditions of comprehension. The Kantian reply is intended therefore to undercut the (empiricist) premiss that lawlike regularities can be discriminated without the involvement of the rational unity of reason. Kant's attack. on the sensation model of cognition in the Analytic is now supplemented with a similar assault on the idea that the spontaneous judgements that make up immediate experience are themselves unconnected to the task of comprehension by reflective judgement. The involvement of reason applies with equal force to the repeated observation of an apple falling as to Newton's laws of motion. In each case, it is the operation of reason (injecting unity as a condition of comprehension and explanation), in conjunction with the content supplied by the understanding, that secures the original discrimination of empirical regularities.

...

286

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation 5.7. SYSTEMATICITY: CONCLUSION

This chapter has been devoted to explicating the ontological significance of the regulative principle of systematicity. The analysis has focused on establishing the correct way of capturing the objective remainder of the principle left untouched by the methodological/pragmatist interpretation. Having dispensed with the pragmatist interpretation of truth in the preceding chapter, this chapter has challenged the remaining obstacle that confronts the five-point realist interpretation: the question of whether the empirical employment of the regulative principle of reason offers anything beyond heuristic use-value. We have examined how the unity of reason forms the basis for the requirement that comprehension is necessarily systematic in character. In its application to nature, this demand of systematicity entails the regulative assumption that nature is governed according to an intrinsic unifying principle. This principle, while empirically unrealizable, stands as a transcendental requirement of comprehension. It reflects the need to posit an analogous causal unity in nature as the phenomenal expression of the rational unity of comprehension. I have recommended that we interpret the priority of systematicity in a strong sense. The requirement of systematicity is not merely a condition for high-level conscious deliberation over the material supplied by the understanding: an independent cognitive act that is useful merely in the tight corners of experience. Instead, I have argued that the discrimination of objects and events, from the scientific to everyday, presupposes that the implicit general truth-structure necessary for understanding is regarded as inherently amenable to the unity of reason and the parallel requirement of the intrinsic unity of nature. As truth operates only within the systematic structure of reason, and as a truth-structure is a necessary component of the holistic determination of belief, I have suggested that the transcendental principle of systematicity contributes a top-down component indispensable for accessing the content supplied by the understanding. This broad involvement of reason effectively blurs the rigid distinction between immediate experience and

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

287

higher-order knowledge claims that is a standard feature of the empiricist-dominated interpretation of empirical realism. Although still a regulative principle, the objective status assigned to the role of systematicity transcends the limits of the methodological reading. Without the regulative assumption of unity, there can be no consistent and self-accordant immediate experience. The realist interpretation urges that the transcendental requirement of systematicity be added to the other transcendental requirements necessary for the possibility of empirical knowledge. The objective significance of the principle is secured on the firm foundation of a necessary condition for the possibility of determinate representation. It is, therefore, legitimate to regard nature as unified according to an immanent principle of organization, despite the fact that, from the empirical perspective, this unity remains recognition transcendent. Although written for a different audience, St Augustine's and St Anselm's Credo ut Intelligam, "I believe in order that I may understand", comes closer to the spirit of the role Kant assigns to the regulative principle of systematicity than the ontological agnosticism of the methodological interpretation. The requirement to treat nature as an intrinsically structured whole is not an optional extra. The ontological requirement that nature is a systematic whole is, instead, a full partner in the original determination of belief.

5.8. CONCLUDING REMARKS At the end of Chapter 3 I summarized the lessons of the Analytic in support of the five defining principles of empirical realism. We are now in a position to restate the additional elements contributed by the Dialectic. The complete list of the governing principles is, once again: 1.

2.

Principle of Representation. All representation of objects relates directly to the activity of judgment. Principle of Experience. Experience is directed, and restricted, to an inherently structured causal world.

288

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

3. Principle of Empirical Knowledge. Knowledge pertains exclusively to experience and its possible advance. 4. Principle of the Systematicity of Nature. The inherent and systematic causal relations of the world can transcend our idiosyncratic experience of them. 5. Anti-Scepticism Principle. The collective force of our beliefs about the empirical world cannot be radically false. Chapters 4 and 5 have extended our grasp on the Principle of Empirical Knowledge (3) and the Principle of the Systematicity of Nature (4). Chapter 4 demonstrated, that Kant's empirical realism allows for the possibility of recognition-transcendent empirical propositions. Kant's liberalized conception of experience and its possible advance means that we can regard all wellformed empirical propositions as subject to the principle of bivalence. The only propositions Kant repudiates are transcendental realist claims-assertions that effectively transcend the strucrure of experience. This result alleviates the anxiety outlined at the beginning of Chapter 4~that is, that the experientially located conception of empirical truth might be in conflict with the standard realist commitment to the possibility of empirical, recognition-transcendent truths. That worry, as we have seen, was motivated by a conflation of transcendental realism with empirical realism. Properly understood, Kant's treatment of transcendental realism in the Dialectic is intended as a warning against constructing the concept of truth and knowledge in a way that extends its boundaries beyond the transcribed domain of possible experience. We misinterpret that boundary condition if we conflate the transcendental negative lesson with a parallel rejection of the realist commitment to the possibility of recognition-transcendent truths within the field of possible experience. On my view, that shift is unwarranted and mistaken. In Chapter 5 we have explored a non-heuristic reading of the Principle of the Systematicity of Nature. Although it was granted that Kant offers some conflicting signals concerning the proper interpretation of this regulative principle, the argument was advanced that the unity of nature is a transcendental requirement necessary for the possibility of the employment of

l Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

289

reason. Despite the mere regulative character of this ideal of pure reason, we have seen that its assigned role takes it well beyond what the heuristic-driven account claims. The coextensive character of the unity of nature and the unity of reason is not an odd cosmic coincidence. It is, rather, a requirement built into the possibility of a full-blooded conception of empirical knowledge. As summarized in detail in the preceding section, the Principle of the Systematicity of Nature can legitimately be mobilized in support of the realist ontological commitment to the determinacy of nature. Taken, together these chapters reveal that realism at the empirical level is not vulnerable to the kinds of attacks Kant himself launches against transcendental realism in the Dialectic. Empirical realism need not flounder in the "broad and stormy ocean" beyond the Analytic. One last worry needs to be discharged in the context of appraising the lessons of the Dialectic. As mentioned in the Introduction to this book, my interpretation of empirical realism repudiates the need for any role for noumenal reality in Kant's account of representation. As Kant, throughout the three Critiques, carefully separates his analysis of reason in its theoretical employment from reason in its practical mode, r consider the denial of any role for noumena in the theoretical domain to be a major virtue of the Priority-ofJudgement approach. Nevertheless, I suspect that my refusal to advocate any role for the thing-in-itself may leave the impression that I am denying in toto that important feature of Kant's transcendental idealist approach. One might question whether it is not in fact the case that the phenomenallnoumenal distinction has a bearing on the kind of realism Kant is endorsing at the empirical level. One might also fear that the interpretation of empirical realism on offer effectively renounces resources necessary for Kant's larger, three-critique project. More generally one may suspect that empirical realism, thus described, is uncomfortably housed within the larger doctrine of transcendental idealism if the noumenal domain is abandoned. These misgivings are ill-conceived. In following the spirit of Plato's dictum that it is better to do a smalJ thing well than a large thing poorly, I have offered in this

290

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

book a modest proposal: the rehabilitation of empirical realism as the centre of gravity for Kant's treatment of experience. In this spirit, the book lays no claim to mapping out the positive role of noumena in Kant's larger project. A fundamental aspect of this work has involved denying any epistemological role for noumenal reality. I have cautioned, in each chapter, against importing noumenal considerations into the phenomenal account of empirical knowledge. Nonetheless, like the remains of Osiris, anxieties concerning the putative involvement of noumena are difficult to put to rest.2 8 A final inspection of the results of each chapter may prove valuable in calming this worry. In Chapters I and 2 I argued that it is the Copernican prioritization of judgement that motivates the rejection of a beliefdetermining role for a noumenal given. The empirical idealist's common prejudice---the given-is a primary target of the Copernican challenge. I argued there that it is a mistake to think that something outside the reach of judgement could constrain, inform, or otherwise justify our empirical beliefs. The "ultimate-realist" approach, with its appeal to a primitive noumenal input, is an artefact of the empiricist epistemic template foisted erroneously upon the Copernican programme. The receptivity characteristic of our form of discursive cognition has no need for the involvement of a noumenal input. The epistemic friction that is necessary to ensure the bearing of thought on the world is explicable entirely within the framework of judgement and its experiential orientation. In Chapter 3 I developed Kant's argument for the representation of objects and events. There we saw how Kant's treatment of temporal structure and empirical content develops in the context of a general argument about the conditions necessary

I

I !

28 In denying noumena a supporting role in Kant's doctrine of empirical realism, I do not intend to abandon the. crucial place for noumena in Kant's treatment of practical reason. In a forthcoming work I develop an interpretation of the practical employment of judgement. The central task of this latter project centres on a careful articulation of the two distinct orientations (theoretical and practical) of reason. The goal is to provide, on the basis of an analysis of the unique conditions and resources of practical reason, an interpretation of Kant's conception of living well that is appropriately sensitive to the practical nature of our investment in the synthetic unity of virtue and happiness.

l Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

291

to sustain the determinacy of objective representation. The requirement of an intrinsic, causal nexus in the manifold of empirical objects expresses the general condition necessary for the discrimination of events and objects. The Analogies provide the temporal and causal structures that allow us to view the synthetic unity of experience as combined in the object. A noumenal input is neither required nor desired. The autonomy of judgement requires that temporal structure and referential relations be explicated in the empirical context, relating to those objects we judge to be the true causes of our beliefs. Noumenal reality, once again, is off the cognitive map. The examination of the Refutation of Idealism at the end of Chapter 3 furthered the realist lessons of the Analytic. Renouncing the role of the given in favour of the holistic determination of belief effectively collapses the epistemic space between inner content and external objects exploited by the sceptic. Banishing epistemic intermediaries (transcendental matter, sensation, or noumenal deliverances) undercuts the epistemic framework that makes radical scepticism plausible. The Copernican reformulation of the original epistemic situation turns the Cartesian view on its head. On Kant's view, what we immediately experience are objects and events. Receptivity reaches all the way out to the world. Recognition of our inner states (mental content) is a second-order activity. The worldinvolving truth-conditions that sustain the possibility of determinate inner content at the same time preclude the possibility of radical referential failure. The game of empirical idealism, which prioritized mental content over and against the conditions of its possibility, is, as Kant suggests, thus played against itself, and with greater justice. My discussion in Chapters 4 and 5 dealt with the lessons of the Dialectic. Once again I was concerned to explicate, against the backdrop of its negative lessons, the positive realist import of Kant's approach when extended to the epistemic limits of human inquiry. In this discussion I targeted the all-toocommon conflation of transcendental realism with empirical realism. I claimed that Kant's empirical realism is consistent with the standard realist commitments to (I) the determinate truth-value of verification-transcendent proposItions, and (2)

......

292

Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

the unity and determinacy of nature itself. I suggested that we can calm the fear that realism at the empirical level might involve transcendent claims that would be vulnerable, in their turn, to Kant's own arguments in the Dialectic. The dominant lesson in both chapters was that the conditions of empirical judgement successfully constrain the employment of reason in such a way that the anxiety associated with transcendent knowledge claims does not arise. Once again, the empirical domain requires no appeal to things-in-themselves in order to ground empirical truth or the unity of nature. Where, then, does this leave the thing-in-itself? The short answer is that, on my view, the thing-in-itself remains safe in the epistemological agnosticism of the Critique. I fully grant that my account of the empirical realist portion of Kant's transcendental idealist approach makes no appeal to the noumenal domain. Nonetheless, the omission of things-inthemselves in Kant's positive account of experience is in no way evidence for the omission of the noumenal domain within the larger transcendental idealist framework. If the original worry was motivated by this concern, then one should feel secure in the knowledge that empirical realism-merely one room in the larger house of transcendental idealism-does not itself threaten to bring down the larger edifice. Reason in its practical orientation may well offer a secure path for the endorsement of noumena. The valid practical use of reason is left untouched by empirical realism. Reason in its theoretical employment confronts the concept of the noumenon as simply problematic: I call a concept problematic that contains no contradiction but that is also, as a boundary for given concepts, connected with other cognitions, the objective reality of which can in no way be cognized. The concept of a noumenon, i.e., of a thing that is not to be thought of as an object of the senses but rather as a thing in itself (solely through a pure understanding), is not at all contradictory; for one cannot assert of sensibility that it is the only possible kind of intuition ... In the end, however, we have no insight into the possibility of such noumena, and the domain outside of the sphere of appearance is empty (for us) ... The concept of a noumenon is therefore merely a boundary concept, in order to limit the pretensions of sensibility, and therefore only of neg-

l Systematicity: A Realist Interpretation

293

ative use. But it is nevertheless not invented arbitrarily, but is rather connected with the limitation of sensibility, yet without being able to posit anything positive outside of the domain of the latter. {B3IQ-II}

If we want to call this object a noumenon because the representation of it is nothing sensible, we are free to do so. But since we cannot apply any of our concepts of the understanding to it, this representation still remains empty for us, and serves for nothing but to designate the boundaries of our sensible cognition and leave open a space that we can fill up neither through possible experience nor through the pure understanding. (B34S)

Noumena have no positive role within Kant's treatment of experience. That fact does not entail that noumena have no place within the transcendental idealist programme en toto. On the contrary, Kant makes it clear that denying a role for noumena in the theoretical employment of reason does not abort the conceptual space in which reason, in a different employment, might be able to invoke the problematic concept of a noumenon. The characteristic claims that (I) the concept of a thing-in~itself "is not at all contradictory", and (2) there remains "a space that we can fill up neither through possible experience nor through the pure understanding" are intended to keep open an uncluttered corridor between empirical realism and the sphere of practical reason. Following Kant's lead, we might put the worry concerning noumena finally to rest by recognizing that, as much as we have to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith, so too we must deny a theoretical role for noumena in order to make room for empirical realism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED

WORKS BY KANT Critique of Judgement, trans.

J.

Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

197 8).

Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L. W. Beck (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1956). Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Critique of Pure Reason, second edition only, trans. J. Meiklejohn (London: Dent and Sons, 1969). Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan Press, 1986). Kants Gesammelte Schriften, iii (Berlin: Koniglich Preussischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften, 19II). Kant: Philosophical Correspondence 1759-1799, ed. and trans. A. Zweig (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967). Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, trans. J. Ellington (Indianapolis: Babbs-Merrill, 1970). Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics That will be Able to Present Itself as a Science, trans. P. Lucus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953).

OTHER WORKS

I

I

,

AI-Azm, 5., The Origins of Kant's Argument in the Antinomies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). Allison, H., Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). review of 'Kant and the Claims of Knowledge', Journal of Philosophy, 86 (1989). - - 'Causality and Causal Laws in Kant: A Critique of Michael Friedman,' in P. Parrini (ed.), Kant and Contemporary E/Jistemology (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994).

Bibliography of Works Cited

295

Alston, W., A Realist Conception of Truth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). Ameriks, K., Kant's Theory of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). Aquila, R., The Representational Mind: A Study of Kant's Theory of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). Baars, B., In the Theatre of Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1997). Beck, L., 'Did the Sage of Konigsberg Have No Dreams?', in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). Bennett,]., Kant's Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). - - Kant's Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Berkeley, G., The Principles of Human Knowledge, in The Principles

of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, ed. G. Warnock (London: William Collins Sons and Co., Ltd., 1972). Bird, G., Kant's Theory of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1962). Blackburn, S., Spreading the Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, . 1984). Brittan, G., Kant's Theory of Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). Buchdahl, G., Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969).

- - Kant and the Dynamic of Reason: Essays on the Structure of . Kant's Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992). Butts, R., 'The Methodological Structure of Kant's Metaphysics of Science', in Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science (London: University of Western Ontario, 1986). Child, W., 'Vision and Experience: The Causal Theory and the Disjunctive Conception', Philosophical Quarterly, 42 (1992). Davidson, D., Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) . ._ - 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge', in E. LePore (ed.), The Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I9 86). 'The Myth of the Subjective', in M. Krausz (ed.), Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1989). 'Afterthoughts, 1987', appended to 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge', in Reading Rorty, ed. Allen Malachowski (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).

Bibliography of Works Cited Davidson, D., 'The Structure and Content of Truth', Journal of Philosophy, 87 (1990). Dennett, D., Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little Brown Publishers, I991). Descartes, R., 'Meditations on the First Philosophy in which the Existence of God and the Real Distinction between the Soul and the Body of Man are Demonstrated', in Discourse on Method and the Meditations, trans. F. Sutcliffe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986). Devitt, M., Realism and Truth, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991). Dummett, M., Frege: Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth, 1973)· Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I978). - - 'What do I Know when I Know a Language', in The Seas of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Evans, G., The Varieties of Reference, ed. J. McDowell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). . Eysenck, M., and Keane, M., Cognitive Psychology (Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, I992). . Frege, G., 'On Sense and Reference', in Meaning and Reference, ed. A. W. Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Friedman, M., Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). Gibson, J. J., The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1979). Gillett, G., Representation, Meaning, and Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Guyer, P., Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). - .- 'Kant's Conception of Empirical Law: Part I', Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 64 (1990). - - 'Reason and Reflective ] udgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity', Nous, 24 (Mar. 1990). - - Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Hacking, 1., 'Language, Truth and Reason' in M. Hollis and S. Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982). Hanna, R., 'The Trouble with Truth in Kant's Theory of Meaning', History of Philosophy Quarterly, IOIr (1993). Horwich, P., Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).

Bibliography of Works Cited

297

Hume, D., A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd edn., ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I989). --An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, 3rd edn., cd. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I989). 'Hyman, J., 'The Causal Theory of Perception', Philosophical Quarterly, 42 (1992). Jardine, N., The Fortunes ofInquiry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I986). Kemp Smith, N., A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason', 2nd edn. (London: MacMillan Press Ltd, 1979). Kitcher, Patricia, Kant's Transcendental Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, I990). Kitcher, Philip, 'How Kant Almost Wrote the "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" ',in J. Mohanty and R. Shahan (eds.), Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1p82). - - 'Projecting the Order of Nature', in R. Butts (ed.), Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science (Lancaster: Reidel & Dordrecht, 1986). - - 'The Unity of Science and the Unity of Nature', in P. Parrini (ed.), Kant and Contemporary Epistemology (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994). Kotzin, R., Lansing, E., and Baumgartner, J., 'Sensations and Judgments of Perception', Kant-Studien, 8I (I990). Langton, R., Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I998). Lewis, C., Mind alzd the Wodd Order: An Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (London: Constable, I929). Longuenesse, B., Kant and the Capacity to Judge (Princeton: Pri~ceton University Press, I997). McBurney, D., and Collings, V., Introduction to Sensation/Perception, 2l1d edn. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Prentice-Hall, I984). McDowell, J", 'Peacocke and Evans on Demonstrative Content', Mind, IOO (Jan. I99I). --Mind· and World, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). 'Reply to Commentators', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5812 (June I998). . - - 'The Woodbridge Lectures I997', Journal of Philosophy, 95/9 (Sept. I998). Miller, G., 'Kant and Berkeley: The Alternative Theories', KantStudiel1, 64 (I973)' Misak, C., Truth and the End of Inquiry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I99 I ).

Bibliography of Works Cited Nagel, G., The Structure of Experience (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983). Palmquist, S., 'Knowledge and Experience', Kant-Studien, 78 (1987). Peacocke, c., 'Demonstrative Content: A Reply to John McDowell', Mind, IOO Gan. I99I). - - . A Study of Concepts (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992). 'Nonconceptual Content Defended', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5812 (June 1998). Pears, D., Hume's System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). Pippin, R., Kant's Theory of Form (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). Posy, C., 'The Language of Appearances and Things in Themselves', Synthese, 4712(1981). - - 'Kant's Mathematical Realism', Monist, 67 (I984). Prauss, G., Ersheinung bei Kant (Berlin: de Gruyter, I971). Prichard, H. A., Kant's Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I 909). Putnam, H., Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198I). - - 'Reference and Truth', in Realism and Reasop (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Quine, W. V., 'In Praise of Observation Sentences', Journal of Philosophy, 90 (1993). - - 'Progress on Two Fronts', Journal of Philosophy, 93 (1996). Robinson, H., 'All or Nothing in Objective Judgment', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 65 (1984). ~.- 'The Priority of Inner Sense', Kant-Studien, 79 (1988). Rogerson, K., 'Kantian Ontology', Kant-Studien, 84 (I993). Sellars, W., 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind', in The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, ed. H. Feigl and M. Scriver (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis, 1956). -'- - 'Truth and "Correspondence" ',Journal of Philosophy, 59 (1962). - - Science and Metaphysics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, J96B). Smart, J., 'Realism and Idealism', Philosophy, 61 (July 1986). Snowdon, P., 'The Objects of Perceptual Knowledge: Part I', Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 64 (J99o). Stevenson, L,'Empirical Realism and Transcendental Anti-Realism: Part 1', Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 57 (1983). 'Meaning, Assertion and Time', Australian Journal of Philosophy, 66 (1988).

--

-,,-=---

-------~~============---

Bibliography of Works Cited

299

Strawson, P., 'Truth', Proceedings of the AristoteiiCm Society, Supplementary 24 (1950). --Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen, 1959). - - The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' (London: Methuen, 1966). - - 'Perception and its Objects', in J. Dancy (ed.), Perceptual Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). - - 'Sensibility, Understanding, and Synthesis', in E. Forster (ed.), Kant's Transcendental Deductions (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989) . - - Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). - - 'The Problem of Realism and the A Priori', in P. Parrini (ed.), Kant and Contemporary Epistemology (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994). Turbayne, C, 'Kant's Refutation of Dogmatic Idealism', Philosophical QuarterlY,5 (1955)· Vaihinger, H., The Philosophy of 'As if . .. ' (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1949). Walker, R., Kant (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1978). --'Empirical Realism and Transcendental Anti-Realism: Part II', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 57 (I98}). - - The Coherence Theory of Truth: Realism, Anti-Realism, Idealism (London: Routledge, I989). - - (ed.), The Real in the Ideal (New York: Garland, 1989). - - 'Kant's Conception of Empirical Law: Part II', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 64 (1990). - - 'Theories of Truth', in Bob Hale and Crispin Wright (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997)·

Weiss, B., 'Anti-Realism, Truth-Value Links and Tensed Truth Predicates', Mind, I05 (Oct. 1996). Westphal, K., 'Affinity, Idealism, and Naturalism: The Stability of Cinnabar and the Possibility of Experience', Kant-Studien, 88 (I997)·

Wilkerson, T., Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: A Commentary for Students (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1922). On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969). Wolff, R., Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the

Bibliography of Works Cited Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I96 3)· Wright, c., 'Realism, Antirealism, Irrealism, Quasi-Realism', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 12 (I988). Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I992). - - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5614 (I99 6 ).

INDEX

Al-Azm, S. 220 n. Allison, H. 2 n. 2, 33-40,42,88 n. 8, II9 n. 63, IB, 154 n., 162 11., 184, 1:99~203, 2I8- 1 9 All or Nothing Principle 85-6,89,95, 107, Irr,II4-I 5,I3 6 ,I3 8-9, 154, 155,1 89,202 Alston,W. 67 n. 62, 2.44 n. 35 Analogies 10-II, 60, 82-4, 142.-2.I3 Second and Third, 156-73 First, 173-182, 189 Antinomies 216-17 First Antinomy, 217-2.7 , Axioms of Intuition and Anticipations of Perception 8-9, 81-3, Il5-4 1 Baars, B. 197 n. 47 Baumgartner,]. 88 n. 8 Beck, L. W. 86,96,98, lor n., II4 Bennett, J. 97 n. 23, 120 n. 64, 157 n., 162 n., 177 n. 25, 180, 181 n. Berkeley, G. 3,23,24,27,28,30-3,35, 39,46,63,186,222 n. 7 Bird, G. 9 n. II, 59 n. 54, III, II7 n. 58, 158,172-3, 182, i83 Blackburn, S. 3 n. 6 Buchdahl, G. 2I2, 255 n. 7, 260-1, 272 n. 22, 273 Butts, R. 216 n. Cartesian epistemic model 26-32, 33, 35-6,38,44,65,71,72,81,83,92, 94,95,96, 1°7,113,115,135, 188 n., 190, 191-2,203-5,208, 276

Causal theory of perception 89-95 Causality, see Analogies Child, W. 90n. 12. Collins, V. 197 n. 47 Copernican revolution 19""20,25,35-8, 44,72, 80,8I, 114, I93,23 2 ,245, 279,290 ,29 1

Davidson, D. 4,5,8,10, II, 45, 54-5, 56, 58,64,6911.70,72 n. 72, 73-9, 9 2 , 94, II} n. 54, rI6, TIT-I8, 136 n., 1}9, 141, 192 n. 40 Dennett, D. III Descartes, R. 2,7, II n. 14, 29-}0, 31, 107,110,186,200, 204-5 Devitt, M. 3,7,36 n. 24 Dllmmett, M. 6 n. 9, 7, 12-13, 17-18 ,67 n. 6r, 75, 221 n., 231, 233---5 Empirical idealism 3,7,9, II, 28, 31-2, 34,43,46,48, 5I , 54,59,62;7 1 ,85, 186,191- 2 Empirical object 38-40 undetermined 60-4 Empirical realism; anti-realist interpretation 17-23,2II, 21 5-16,2.30-5 definition of 6 five principles of 25,79,209,287-8 Empiricism 28,47-9, SI, 53, 54, 106,223 attack on, 73-9, 98, !I)-IS, 209, 28 4-5 Epistemic humanism 17-20,44, 7I, 210 Error: problem of I93-9 see also scepticism and perceptual illusions Evans, G. ),8,56 n. 46, 102--6, I28, I1.9, 130, I3I Feder/Garve review 2 n. 1,16, r86 n. Feyerabcnd, P. 207 n. 67 First-person reports r07-13 Frege, G. II n. 14,16, 51 11. 40, 66, 231 Friedman, M. 5 n., 175 n., 184 n. 34 Generallogic 220-4 General truth structure 65,69, 70, 81, I45,166, r81, 192, 283-5,286-7 Gibson,]. 36 n. 25, 59 n. 53, 142, 198n., 199 n ·49

302

Index

Givenness: attack on transcendental given 36, 98-101,104-6, I 36-40, 210 mental content 22-4,28,44,46,54-6, 7 1 ,153 myth of the given 4,9, 17, 42 ,44, 49-5 8,74 see also sensation Grice, H. 89 Guyer, P. 211.2,3811.28, 12011.64, 137 n. 86, I47 n. 6, 153, 168-9, 180---5,212,219 n. 4, 221 n., 255-6 , 262,273 Hacking, I. 207 Hanna, R. 23" Herz, M. 84, 132 Holism of belief 65,66,70,74-5,191, 194,206,210 Horwich, P. 6711. 63,68-9 Hume, D. 2,7, 17,26,27-8,30---1,3 2 ,33, 35,46- 8,5 1 ,5 2 ,54,63,85,110, 12311. 68, 127, 129, 161, 164, 179, 192, 195, 20I, 202, 2.03, 204, 2.2.2-3, 224,2.74,275 Hyman,]. 91-2,94-5,196 Indeterminate/determinate model of cognition 9,58-66,83,131-5> 143 Induction 274-6 Jardine, N. 241 n. 32,242.,244 Kemp-Smith, N. 21 n., 85, 112, 136, 1.37-8 Kitcher, Philip 65 n. 60, 2II-12, 216 n., 251--2, 255-6, 261 Kotzin, R. 88 n. 8 Kripke, S. 69 n. 70 Kuhn, T. 207 n. 67,260 Langton, R. 239 n. 27 Lallsing, E. 88 11. 8 Leibniz, G. 7,26-7,28,30,32,223,224, 239 n. 27 Lewis, C. 861l. 7, 96, 98 n. 25, 101 11. Locke, J. 28 n. 13, 179, 222 11. 7 Lockean-Kant model of representation 86-9,92,93, 94-I02, 104, 106, II} Longuenesse, B. 8811.8, I46 11. 3, 167, 17711. 24,18}-4

McBurney, D. 197 n. 47 McDowell,]. 4,5,8,45,53,54,5 6- 8 ,94, 102-6, II7 11. 57, 118 n. 59, 129 '3 0 , 19611 .46 Miller, G . .3 n. 5 Misak, C. I3 n. 17,231,243-4 Nagel, G. 9 n. 11,47-8,51 n., 61, 108 n., 109-10, 121 n., 130 n. 78, 13 2-3, 134, 137 n. 86, 168 n. 17,195 11 .43, 198 n. 48,26211. 14 Palmquist, S. 26311. Peacocke, c., 56 n. 46, 103 n. 37, 104, 128 n:73 Pears, D. 12311.68 Peirce, C. 13 n. 17,231 11. 16,23 611 . 2 3 & 24, 240n • 30 Perception: objective irreversibility 156-9 objective reversibility 159-62 rule-bound order 162-73 see also the Analogies Perceptual illusions T05, II9, 198 Pippin, R. 35 n., 43-4,52-3,88, II9 11. 63 Posy, C. 2rI,235-6 ' Practical reason 290 n., 292.-3 Prauss, G. II4 n. 55 Prichard, H. II.9 n. 63, 181 n. Priority of Judgement 17,46-9,7 6 , 84-~r5,154,182,I84,I85,I93,197,

202,205,209-IO,283 Putnam, H. 1311.17,17, 69 n . 70, 23111.16, 2}2 n., 236 11.23,237,246

Ramsey, F. 67 n. 63 Real possibility 222-5 Receptivity 37,93, II3, I39-40 , 20 3-'4, 290---1 Recognition-transcendent propositions 212,215,228,232,235,238-44,248, 288 Reference 40-4,66-73,75, 192 , 199 Refutation of Idealism II, 23, 83, 84, 185-93,199-200,203,211 Robinson, H . .98,99, TOO, 101 Rogerson, K. 228""30, 246 Rorty, R. 72 n. 72 Scepticism global

Index Humean 201-4 Sellars, W. 55,6811.68, 196n. 46 Sensation 9,48-9,53,55,65,75,98, I09, I26-7, 135, 137, 194,274-5,283 Serial order of apprehension 122, I24, I32'4, I5 I- 2 Smart, J. 240 n. 29 Stevenson, L. rS, II211. 52, 2II Strawson, P. 311. 6, r6, 21 n., 67 n. 63, S9-94, 9.1, 97 n . 23, II7 n. 57, II9 11. 63, no 11.64, I2.) n. 68, I5 2 n. 79, 141 n., 147 11. 6, 154 n., 162 n., rSI n., 22111. Substance, see First Analogy Systematicity I3-I4,250-87; attllck on methodological view 256-66 T arski, A. 67 Thing-in-itself 27-8, !OI, 225, 289-93 Transcendental idealism 15,20-1, 219 11. 4, 289, 292 Transcendental realism 7,26-)2,205, 206,217-27,288 Truth: assertion-condition approach 12-I3, 21I,2I2, 230, 233-49 definition of 67; empirical truth 66-73 relation to inquiry 230-49 truth-condition approach n.-I3,50, 65,72 ,78 , TIO, 195-9,229-30 , 24 I -4,247 truth-first account of representation 72 ,77

TurbaYlle, C. 3 n. 5 Ultimate realism 20-),44, 7I, I06,2IO, 290 Underdetermitlation of apprehension 41, I3 2-4,I46-54,2IO Unity in the object 13,42, Unity of comprehension Unity of reason I3,266-7I defusing empi rieist challenge 27 1- 6 relation to the unity of nature 87, 270-1, 284--5 see also unity of comprehension Unobservables 2)8-9 Vaihillger, H. 216 n., 251 II. 2 Van Fraassen, B. 239 n. 27 Walker, R. 9 n. 12,20-1,22-3,67 n. 64, 99-100, 101, 122 n., 135 n., 14611.4, 148 n., 181 n., 199 n. 50,272,274-5 Weiss, B. 236 n. 23 Westphal, K. 65 n. 59 Wilkerson, T. 21 n., 97 n. 23, 123, 13 2 n. 79, 147, 148, 157 n., 15 811 . 14,18111.,191 n., 257 n. Wittgenstein, L. 9 n. 10, III, II2, II), 221 n., 231 Wolff, R. 162 n. Wright, C. 6 n. 9, 17, 18 n. 3,67 n. 61, 6) & 64, 68 n. 68, 233 n., 234 n. 21, 23 6 n. 23, 237