Immanuel Kant, Critical Assessments (Vol. II): Kant's Critique of pure reason

IMMANUEL KANT Critical Assessments

IMMANUEL KANT Critical Assessments Edited by Ruth F. Chadwick and Clive Cazeaux

VOLUME II Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

London and New York

Contents

First published 1992 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Taylor & Francis 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint a/the Taylor & Francis Group

Transferred to Digital Printing 2006 Selection and editorial material

© 1992 Ruth

F. Chadwick and Clive Cazeaux

Acknowledgements

Phototypeset in 1O/12pt Times by Intype, London All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Immanuel Kant: Critical Assessments (Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers Series) I. Chadwick, Ruth II. Cazeaux, Clive III. Series 193 Libl

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10 Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne

Introduction Clive Cazeaux and Ruth F. Chadwick Knowledge as a Relation and Knowledge as an Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason Ermanno Bencivenga Copernicus' Role in Kant's Revolution Norwood Russell Hanson Knowledge and Experience: An Examination of the Four Reflective 'Perspectives' in Kant's Critical Philosophy Stephen Palmquist Kant's Notion of Transcendental Presupposition in the First Critique A. C. Genova Kant's Paralogisms Patricia Kitcher Kant's Doctrine of the Self Susan Mendus Personal Identity and Kant's 'Refutation of Idealism' Richard E. Aquila Kant on the Perception of Time W. H. Walsh The Unity of Time and Space, and its Role in Kant's Doctrine of A Priori Synthesis Michael D. Newman The Concept of Experience and Strawson's Transcendental Deduction Kim Davies

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168 185 201

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11 Why did Kant Write Two Versions of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories? Michel Meyer 12 Synthesis and Transcendental Idealism Ralph C. S. Walker 13 Thought and Intuition in Kant's Critical System Daniel C. Kolb 14 Things-in-Themselves Lauchlan Chipman 15 The Complementarity of Phenomena and Things-in-Themselves W. H. Werkmeister 16 The Schematism and Empirical Concepts Robert B. Pippin 17 Kant's Schematism Reconsidered Eva Schaper 18 The Originality of Kant's Distinction between Analytic and Synthetic Judgements Henry E. Allison 19 Can Kant's Synthetic Judgements be made Analytic? Lewis White Beck 20 Transcendental Arguments Revisited Jay F. Rosenberg

Acknowledgements 204 228 244 263 276 286 304

324 347 363

Knowledge as a Relation and Knowledge as an Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason: reprinted from Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15 (1985) with permission. Copernicus' Role in Kant's Revolution: reprinted from Journal of the History of Ideas XX (1959) with permission. Knowledge and Experience: An Examination of the Four Reflective 'Perspectives' in Kant's Critical Philosophy: reprinted from Kant-Studien 78 (1987) with permission. Kant's Notion of Transcendental Presupposition in the First Critique: reprinted from Essays on Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason', edited by J. N. Mohanty and Robert W. Shahan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982). Kant's Paralogisms: reprinted from Philosophical Review XCI (1982) with permission. Kant's Doctrine of the Self: reprinted from Kant-Studien 75 (1984) with permission. Personal Identity and Kant's 'Refutation of Idealism': reprinted from Kant-Studien 70 (1979) with permission. Kant on the Perception of Time: reprinted from Kant Studies Today, edited by Lewis White Beck, by permission of Open Court Publishing Company, La Salle, Illinois. © 1969 by The Edward C. Hegeler Foundation, La Salle, Illinois. The Unity of Time and Space, and its Role in Kant's Doctrine of A Priori Synthesis: reprinted from Idealistic Studies 11 (1981) with permission.

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The Concept of Experience and Strawson's Transcendental Deduction: reprinted from Analysis 42 (1982) with permission. Why did Kant Write Two Versions of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories?: originally published in Synthese 47 (1981) 357-83 © 1981 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, USA. Reprinted by permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Introduction Clive Cazeaux and Ruth F. Chadwick

Synthesis and Transcendental Idealism: reprinted from Kant-Studien 76 (1985) with permission. Thought and Intuition in Kant's Critical System: reprinted from Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986) with permission. Things-in- Themselves: reprinted from Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 33 (1972). The Complementarity of Phenomena and Things-in- Themselves: originally published in Synthese 47 (1981) 301-12, © 1981 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, USA. Reprinted by permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers. The Schematism and Empirical Concepts: reprinted from Kant-Studien 67 (1976) with permission. Kant's Schematism Reconsidered: originally published in the Review of Metaphysics 18 (1964), reprinted with permission. The Originality of Kant's Distinction between Analytic and Synthetic Judgements: reprinted from The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, edited by Richard Kennington (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1985), with permission. Can Kant's Synthetic Judgements be made Analytic?: reprinted from KantStudien 45 (1953-4), with permission. Transcendental Arguments Revisited: reprinted from Journal of Philosophy LXXII (1975) with permission of the author and the Journal.

Three criteria have guided our choice of essays for the volume. (1) Our main criterion was that each essay, to merit inclusion, should be making an overall, definite point relevant to the Critique of Pure Reason and not pursuing secondary enquiries which commentators have introduced to supplement the Critique. (2) As a consequence of (1), each essay had to be a relatively free-standing piece of interpretation. By 'free-standing', we mean that a paper, for its import, does not rely heavily upon and assume the reader's familiarity with previous essays. This is to exclude responses to specific essays and papers which are criticisms of arguments for or against particular interpretations. We wanted the volume to be as self-contained as possible, with the significance of each contribution lying in the original argument advanced by the author and not dispersed through a series of references. (3) We took the extent to which an essay has been cited by other commentators to be a measure of its importance and, therefore, its suitability for inclusion. Obviously, this final criterion could not be exercised in the cases of more recent papers, as insufficient time has passed for critical trends to appear in their wake. In these cases, merit which satisfied (1) and (2) was sufficient to confirm inclusion. No fixed understanding of the Critique'S content has influenced the selection process. However, a univocal reading has emerged. It is not surprising that a predilection for essays which make a general but definite point should be committed to a particular mode of interpretation. In the business of interpretation, one can either stick vehemently to the letter of original works and strive for close, textual consistency or volunteer sympathetic hypotheses which promote an overall understanding. Of course, no single project is going to follow one approach entirely at the expense of the other; the distinction has been made to illustrate extremes. The essays here, though, do side with the latter approach, and it is this predilection which has enabled the univocal reading to emerge.

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The two principal arguments in the Critique evince the possibility of knowledge within experience and the impossibility of knowledge beyond the limits of experience. The principle which underlies both arguments is Kant's concept of the transcendental. Generally, the transcendental alludes to the conditions which must apply for the possibility of knowledge. However, for us, the condition which is emphasized overall is that concepts must apply to the objects of experience which are to be known by them; the emphasis is on there being a necessary affinity between subject and object. The implication is that Kant is questioning the traditional philosophical distinction between verbal knowledge and material object. Bencivenga turns to Kant's Copernican Revolution to examine what the consequences of this affinity are for the verbal-material opposition. In his essay 'Knowledge as a Relation and Knowledge as an Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason', he claims that difficulties in Kant's text have prevented the significance of the Revolution from being fully realized. Kant discards the contemporary epistemological model of the world possessing a pre-ordained, determinate reality to which our knowledge must aspire and replaces it with a symbiotic kinship between knower and known; there is still a reality to be known, but how it is to be known lies within us. This is the Copernican Revolution as it is generally understood. However, Bencivenga maintains that Kant is actually saying more than this. Kant, he claims, is proposing that knowledge necessarily involves the relation to an intentional object; if it were not for the fact that the objects of experience conform to our understanding, then it would be impossible to conceptualize experience into an intelligible form. That the philosophical language of Kant's day did not include the notion of an intentional object would explain the difficulties and contradictions which have hampered this reading of the Revolution. Fortunately, there is sufficient material in the A Deduction for Bencivenga to make his point. Kant is not just reversing the order of perception but, with the necessary relation to an intentional object, revising the distinction between knowledge and object so that the notion of the real as it is experienced takes on a whole new meaning. The textual validity of the analogy to Copernicus deserves comment. The analogy is based on Kant's own comparison between his new epistemological stance and the reversal in astronomical perspective inspired by Copernicus. Hanson, though, in his essay 'Copernicus' role in Kant's Revolution', proclaims that this understanding of the Copernican Revolution, as the shift in thought which grounds Kant's critical system, has accrued unwarranted significance. Commentators, he claims, including Kemp Smith and Alexander, speak of the Copernican Revolution as though Kant employed the term himself when, in fact, he never uses the expression. The only two references to Copernicus in Kant's entire corpus

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occur in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason and here, Hanson argues, the appeal to Copernicus is made not to suggest following his example of 'activating' the observer but to show the importance of making trial of untested hypotheses; Kant is playing not on the nature of his hypothesis but merely on its newness. That the hypotheses submitted by Copernicus and Kant should both upturn the existing theoretical models within their fields is pure coincidence. Nevertheless, Hanson adds, even though the received sense of Kant's Copernican Revolution is the result of creative interpretation, some justification can be found for it. The key hypotheses in the developments of mathematics and physics which Kant alludes to each stress the point that the mind looks for what it has itself put into objects. The fact that Hanson has to make his point is a testimony to the appropriateness of the accepted analogy. Given that the transcendental describes the conditions which must apply for the possibility of knowledge within experience, a clarification of Kant's distinction between knowledge and experience would be germane. There are four reflective perspectives, Palmquist suggests, which assist Kant's distinction between knowledge and experience. 'Experience' within the distinction, Palmquist claims, refers either to the immediate encounter which the subject has with an object or to the empirical knowledge which such an encounter yields. 'Knowledge' within the main distinction, however, is reflective knowledge: the knowledge obtained as a result of the conscious decision to go beyond or back over the content of empirical knowledge. There are four critical perspectives which give rise to reflective knowledge corresponding to the four permutations which occur when the analytic-synthetic and the a priori-a posteriori distinctions are multiplied. For example, the transcendental perspective is directed towards exacting the a priori conditions which a subject must apply for the possibility of empirical knowledge, and so corresponds to the synthetic a priori. Palmquist recommends that, equipped with the four perspectives - the empirical, the transcendental, the logical and the practical - we can chart the relation between knowledge and experience throughout Kant's entire critical system. To appreciate the transcendental style of argument fully, we need to recognize the contribution which Kant's notion of presupposition makes to it. Kantian scholarship has thrown up four possible interpretations of what constitutes a transcendental argument, only one of which, Genova argues, is legitimate. A true transcendental argument is exemplified by the Transcendental Deduction, which gives a priori justification for the objective validity of an exclusive conceptual scheme. Now what is important is that presupposition for Kant is not just a necessary condition but the material possibility or principle which must be the case if what presupposes it is to be the case. So the presuppositions within the Tran-

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scendental Deduction are the schematized principles of the categorial scheme which must be in place for the possibility of any objective experience. However, the criticism most often directed against the notion of a transcendental deduction is that, rather than justifying the only conceptual scheme possible for experience, it in actual fact justifies one particular scheme among many. Against this, Genova maintains that the Copernican Revolution puts paid to any thought of a conceptual scheme being vetted through correspondence or comparison by situating human cognition as the source of objective determination. The logical possibility that things could be other than they are is ruled out because the presuppositions underlying human cognition are the precepts for objectivity, so the only possible objects of experience are the objects we experience. To construe the Transcendental Deduction as an argument which simply legitimizes one particular conceptual scheme among many is to miss the point; Kant has provided a new paradigm of objectivity, replacing the paradigm of metaphysical realism. The Paralogisms in the first Critique, Kitcher announces, can be explained by means of the Transcendental Deduction and the transcendental-empirical distinction. While they purport to be an exposure of illusions into which the rationalists inevitably fall, Kitcher holds that the First and Third Paralogisms, at least, are Kant's own Paralogisms, in that the illusions arise from his own doctrines. It is because of the Subjective Deduction in the Transcendental Deduction that Kant endorses the minor premiss of the First Paralogism that I am the absolute subject of all my judgements. This is a transcendental claim in that it asserts a necessary condition of experience. Error creeps in when we confuse this with an empirical claim supported by an intuition. All the Paralogisms involve a confusion between transcendental and empirical claims. Kitcher exposes a tension in Kant's work, however, between the argument in the Subjective Deduction and the Paralogisms, and his 'twoselves' doctrine, between the view that the categories must apply to all experience and the necessity of speaking of a 'mere something' subject to no category. In contrast to this direct reading of Kant, Susan Mendus is concerned in her essay to correct some misinterpretations of the Paralogisms which she takes to be common to English-language commentators. It is frequently assumed that Kant's doctrine of the self is an attempt to answer questions about personal identity and, as such, a response to Hume. Both Strawson and Bennett, Mendus claims, take Kant to be dealing with corrigibility in relation to the ascription of mental states to an identical experiencing subject; although they hold opposite views, they both take the underlying issue to be the question of how I can be certain that a perception is mine and not someone else's. However, according

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to Mendus, the question of corrigibility never arises in Kant's text, and what is more, corrigibility does not affect Hume's enquiry. Hume's problem is what gives unity to a set of perceptions which has already been picked out as one set, not what criteria justify casting any particular perception as a member of this set rather than another. Mendus argues, with Kitcher, that Kant claims that the self is not an experience in its own right but a condition of the possibility of experience. I can have no awareness of a self as the subject of the 'I think' because the 'I think' does not correspond with anything at all. Mendus takes the crucial difference between Kant and Hume to be that Kant exposes the source of the belief in a continuing subject of experience. He is not interested in providing Hume with an impression of a continuing self with which to unite his set of perceptions. The 'I think' is not the perception of an object but the transcendental act which fulfils the possibility of experience. The univocal reading of the Paralogisms which Mendus and Kitcher supply is reinforced by Aquila in his examination of personal identity in the Refutation of Idealism. Aquila argues that the Refutation is not concerned with the self as the condition which gives necessary continuity to successive experiential states but with the circumstances which provide the pronoun'!' with a definite, empirical referent. It therefore goes further than the Deduction. Kant offers the thesis that I am conscious of my own existence solely through the perception of objects existing external to me in space. Recent interpretations, he opines, have failed to do justice to the Refutation because they have conflated unity of consciousness or the mere consciousness of a self with the more replete knowledge of oneself. Consciousness of a self is really the province of the Transcendental Deduction, and the assumed synonymity between it and knowledge of oneself has promoted the conviction that the Refutation is nothing more than an extension of the Deduction. Both Bennett and Strawson deal in terms of the awareness of a self as the subject of experience but, Aquila avers, we should be thinking more in terms of the identity of the subject to fulfil Kant's intentions. In this part of the Critique Kant is interested in the self as a particular individual empirically determined in time. A determination of time, Aquila expounds, is not the obtaining of a state of affairs at some moment but the expression of durational existence. To sustain an awareness of duration, the immediate consciousness of outer objects is, as Kant puts it, 'indispensable'. The empirical identity of an individual, precisely who the experiencing subject is, is determined solely in virtue of the reference to permanent objects existing in space. This is much stronger than the Deduction argument, which only requires a general notion of objects existing in space. In the Analogies of Experience, Kant sets out to show that certain conditions must abide for there to be any perception of time. W. H.

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Walsh's pivotal claim in 'Kant on the perception of time' is that Kant's transcendental method is evident here. He gives a concise exposition of each of the three Analogies and details the physical and phenomenal conditions necessary to ground the three corresponding temporal modes of duration, succession and coexistence. The gist of his essay is that the notion of a constant and uniformly flowing time in the Critique is essentially a question of objectivity. To ascribe events to a single system in which they all connect without paradox or contradiction is to make a claim about the objective ordering of events over and above how occurrences appear for a particular experient. Only after the order of things has been secured objectively can discussion proceed about the subjective order as it appears in experience. For this to be possible, the experienced world has to be of a certain form. The everyday pattern of events will only be recognized as a pattern if it is seen against the backdrop of something permanent. Kant has been criticized for holding that we need to think in terms of total regularity; surely a limited number of random events would not make it impossible for us to make sense of our experience. Here Walsh agrees with Kant, seeing the difficulty of setting limits to the number of exceptions once some are admitted. The underlying substance necessary for us to be able to posit a unitary time framework, as Walsh explains, is the single, objective history which binds temporal reality. The precise nature of the object which is expected to be total is unclear. Walsh suggests that substance in the First Analogy is not a metaphysical or physical absolute but the continuous phenomenality evinced by experience. Whereas in Walsh's essay the conditions of intelligibility are to be found in the phenomenal world, Michael Newman's paper, 'The unity of time and space, and its role in Kant's doctrine of a priori synthesis', introduces the suggestion that such conditions also have to be looked at within the experient. Newman's message is that unity, in this instance, does not presuppose the synthesis of a manifold but rather synthesis presupposes a unity. With the synthesis of a manifold, space and time as the forms of intuition are given as the sensible constituents of experience and combined into a unified representation. However, Newman contends, talk of unsynthesized intuitions should not instil the idea that they are readily available components in the constitution of experience. To counter this interpretation, he continues, Kant combines time and space and gives them as a formal intuition, that is, as the representation of a unity. This means that the possibility of any spatio-temporal awareness must presuppose that each sense-impression belongs to a unitary order. The unity of apperception - the '1' which necessarily endures through all experience - can be introduced as a parallel here. To be aware of, say, drawing a straight line in its entirety, each moment of the

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pencil marking the line must fall within my experience. It is only because the 'I' endures throughout that I am aware of drawing the length of the line. If unity presupposed a synthesis, it would not be the case that a unified representation was simply the sum of the stages in which the event occurred, for there would be no necessity binding the individual stages together into a unified whole. That is why here, as Newman announces, it is the other way round. A necessary condition for the synthetic arrangement of sense-impressions into a unified representation is that each impression occurs within a single spatio-temporal framework. That is what Kant intends by giving space and time as the forms of intuition and their unity as a formal intuition. The Transcendental Deduction explores further the opposition between experient and experienced world in its move from the necessary conditions of the possibility of experience to the objective character of experience. Here Strawsonian reconstructions prevail; in fact, Strawson's indirect prominence makes the inclusion of a direct extract in this volume unnecessary. The success and appeal of his account of the Deduction are undoubtedly due to its economy: a necessary condition for the possibility of experience is simply the applicability of the distinction between 'This is how things seem' and 'This is how things are.' For Strawson, the possibility of experience is equivalent to the possibility of judgements of experience, since experience, to be experience that is of interest to us, must be of some general, i.e. conceptual, character. However, Kim Davies's short but provocative essay, 'The concept of experience and Strawson's Transcendental Deduction', raises a problem for both Kant and Strawson. He thinks that the concept of experience here requires investigation. He wants to know who make up the community alluded to by Strawson's first-person plural because if it is, as he suspects, the community of critical philosophers, then the conclusion that the seems-is distinction is a necessary condition of the possibility of experience becomes a statement of the obvious. The concept of experience exercised in critical philosophy already includes the distinction between how things are and how they are experienced, as it is the means by which claims to knowledge are justified. The discrepancies between the two versions of the Transcendental Deduction have inspired much debate and incurred much disagreement. According to Michel Meyer, Kant was driven to write two versions because of a duality in his view of knowledge in the first Critique. The duality gives rise to a paradox, and each version of the Deduction explores one alternative. The problem, as Meyer poses it, is as follows. The Deduction is concerned with what it is for something to be an object for a subject. Kant frequently claims that the object is 'given', but what does this mean? One alternative is that the object is given to intuition, which

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implies that there is knowledge at the level of sensibility. This appears to make the understanding superfluous, and conflicts with Kant's doctrine that both sensibility and understanding are required for knowledge. The other is that something else, x, is given in intuition, but in this case the understanding goes beyond sensibility in synthesizing it as an object. This is also in conflict with Kant's epistemology. The first version of the Deduction takes the latter view, and restricts the understanding's activities by defining experience as a synthesis of concepts and intuitions which takes place at three levels. The second takes the former view and argues for the necessity of the role of the understanding by making it alone responsible for synthesis. Both are unsatisfactory, as they conflict with aspects of the 'spirit of Kantianism'. The first ignores the claim that objects can only be phenomenal and not (as the given x) transcendental. The second gives too much autonomy to the understanding. Some commentators have thought that there is evidence here of the 'patchwork theory'. Meyer rejects this approach. For him the essential requirement of Kant's epistemology, that both sensibility and understanding are needed for knowledge, is maintained by the refinements and compromises in the two versions. If one alternative is preferred, the equilibrium between sensibility and understanding is lost. Ralph Walker's essay, 'Synthesis and transcendental idealism', similarly finds Kant facing two incompatible and equally unappealing interpretations, and offers a solution. Transcendental idealism traverses the middle ground between all-out idealism and common-sense realism. It presents the world not as a figment perpetuated by the mind or as an array of existents independent of the mind but as a world of appearances created by the mind in correspondence with the world of things-inthemselves. Ambiguity over the precise relation between appearances and things-in-themselves, Walker maintains, threatens transcendental idealism's procession: how do appearances and things in themselves connect? Kant stipulates that things in themselves are unknowable, yet if they go some way towards determining the character of experience, then surely we can claim some knowledge of them. Walker suggests that looking at Kant's doctrine of synthesis can not so much divulge the nature of the relationship as make plain why it must stay a mystery. Synthesis is the organizing of unconnected representations and can be empirical or transcendental. In the second edition Critique, though, all synthesis is transcendental, that is, the mind constructs appearances according to its own condition. This means there is no room left for things-in-themselves to ground appearances. Here, in what would otherwise pass for an impossible situation, Walker catches sight of a possibility by recalling a point Goodman makes in relation to Wittgenstein. Similarity in appearance between two objects is no guarantee that the objects

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are similar in themselves. The way in which we organize experience will depend on the primitive predicates which structure our conceptual repertoire. A community with a different set of concepts will divide its world up differently. What is important is that neither framework is closer to the 'facts' than the other. In addition, there is no way of knowing just how an appearance maps on to a thing-in-itself. To want to know precisely how the two correspond is to proceed with the conviction that for every property displayed by our phenomenal object there is a kindred property within the twinned thing-in-itself. To reason as such is to exercise conceptual determination beyond where it is appropriate to do so. Only by admitting to there being some relation can a world of sensible appearances be created by the mind in correspondence with the world of things-in-themselves. The un know ability of the way in which components interact affects the relation between thought and intuition. In Kantian scholarship, the distinction between thought and intuition is subject to attack on two separate counts: how can the acceptance of two distinct faculties be justified if no single intuitive element can be distilled from experience; and how can the two faculties be distinguished, as neither edition of the Critique offers criteria for the distinction? Kolb sets out to defend Kant (and indirectly affirms Walker's point) on the issue, and of the two criticisms, proposes that the latter is the easier to meet. That there are two distinct faculties, he announces, can be demonstrated by reflecting on the nature of knowledge itself. Knowledge for us is necessarily transitive, a discursive relationship between subject and object. The a priori concept of an object as distinct from the subject enables us to understand the very concept of knowledge whereby we know but always entertain the possibility that we are wrong. Thus, it is in virtue of this transitivity that we can distinguish between how a thing appears and how it actually is. However, a distinction between thought and intuition recognizes that there is something for knowledge to be appropriate to. So although no empirical insight into the manner of our cognitive performance is available, the nature of knowledge itself, by transcendental reflection, substantiates Kant's distinction between thought and intuition. The question of how we are to interpret the thing-in-itself remains one of the most controversial areas of Kant scholarship. Is it to be understood in an ontological or epistemological way? Walker, as we have seen, takes the former view. On the contrary, the thing-in-itself, Chipman claims, is a contrast concept: not a goal before which the understanding should humble itself but a locus, a theoretical device, partnering the more readily empirical considerations in Kant's theory of knowledge. For Kant, the objects of experience are appearances. His thought should not be construed as the imprisonment of knowledge within the confines of subjectivism. In fact, the success of Chipman's treatment is due to his

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objectifying appearances and invigorating a kinship between them and things-in-themselves. From the abidance of appearances, it is a viable conviction that there are things-which-appear. As far as the experience goes, within the enclosure of the opposition, there is no immanent different between, say, a daggerish appearance and a dagger which appears. That the former in no way entails the latter is not a disability here. All that is required is that the accountability of an experience be conducive to the concept of a thing-which-appears. There is, however, a two-way incongruity between an appearance and a thing-which-appears. In addition to the lack of entailment already stated, there is, in the opposite direction, nothing which impels a dagger to present a daggerish appearance. An object can always volunteer another, alternative, incommensurate appearance. At this point, Chipman introduces what he calls the logical inexhaustibility of objects: the fact that it will always be logically possible that there is more to what appears than what appears. This potentially infinite disclosure means that to invoke the thing-whichappears is to bring into play the concept of a thing-other-than-as-itappears. Things-other-than-as-they-appear, Chipman suggests, are Kant's things-in-themselves, for it is this annexe of possibility which preserves the 'in itself'. The thing-in-itself is then not some secluded, extraphenomenal particular but a conceptual elongation of the object of experience. Given that the concept of 'object' has general application, appearances and things-in-themselves work in tandem to distinguish something appearing F from an F-ish appearance. With Werkmeister's examination of the thing-in-itself, the possibility that Kant wants to remove the distinction of kind from between verbal knowledge and material objects is brought to the fore. In 'the complementarity of phenomena and things-in-themselves', Werkmeister identifies things-in-themselves with the conceptual models employed in the physical sciences on the grounds that an object of study undergoes a shift in status when empirical investigation proceeds beyond the realm of direct sensory experience. When we see a rainbow, bands of colour are the objects of our experience, not the rays of light or the atoms constituting the water molecules, yet we think of the latter as the 'determining ground' of the rainbow. These theoretical entities, Werkmeister claims, are things-in-themselves and, as paradigms, serve to establish an unequivocal complementarity between appearances and things-in-themselves. The benefit of his account is that it gives credence to the possibility that the thing-in-itself is a particular which does not recognize the material-verbal distinction: talk of rays and atoms has filtered through into common usage to the extent that they are no longer held to be scientific fictions but actual, though unperceivable, existents. So the epistemological construct, with time, ossifies into an ontological construct.

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Is this what should happen to the Kantian thing-in-itself? Despite Werkmeister's attempt to silence controversy, the dispute continues. We are volunteering the hypothesis that it is Kant's intention to affirm that concepts necessarily apply to the objects of experience, with the implication that verbal knowledge and material objects are treated as components of equal standing. Our hypothesis is a sympathetic one, presented to assist a coherent reading of the Critique. Pippin, though, in his essay 'The Schematism and empirical concepts', casts a more subdued light over the work and emphasizes the difficulties which can arise when inadequacies in the original text are taken into consideration. He is interested in how the concept in Kant's epistemology furnishes empirical knowledge. He sees the Critique's central concern as being the ancient 'one over many' problem of how the concept, as a universal, relates to the objects of experience. If we assume that this problem is the hub of Kant's enquiry, then, Pippin advises, the explanation he offers is far from satisfactory. He makes it clear that concepts, for Kant, are rules which arrange the disorganized content of the manifold into an intelligible order. Kant proposes that concepts are directed by schemata or 'figures-in-general' submitted by the imagination. So for the concept 'dog' to be able to determine an indefinite number of dog-instances, the imagination must first supply the figure of a dog-in-general. But, as Pippin observes, the notion of a figure-in-general only postpones the difficulty. If concepts are the rules which determine the particular objects of experience, then, by introducing the notion of a schema to govern their application, Kant has simply retreated from one rule to another. Pippin's analysis highlights a second difficulty. The Copernican Revolution has it that the subject's cognitive faculties structure how the world appears, yet the Transcendental Deduction demands that the world receives structure objectively. The problem then is that the organizing principle which emanates from a subjective source is being asked to determine an objective world. If, as Pippin suggests, the Schematism chapter is the focus of concern in the first Critique, then the difficulties which he finds with empirical concepts would seem to indicate that the volume leaves Kant's theory of knowledge unresolved. The idea that concepts necessarily apply to the objects of experience avoids the difficulties raised by Pippin. Schaper, in her essay 'Kant's Schematism reconsidered', avows that the work only gives the impression of being unfinished because the Schematism chapter is a foretaste of the third Critique; it is not until the third Critique, she adds, that Kant's critical project as a whole receives its conclusion. Her interpretation of the chapter questions the sovereignty of the idea that the mind structures experience. She conducts her study in the light of the third Critique to show that Kant moves on from the binary 'source and structure' model so that the age-old problem of correspondence or 'fit' between concept

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and object is no longer faced head-on. His framework of source intuitions being subsumed under concepts would seem to perpetuate the confrontation, but, Schaper declares, this happens only up to a point, beyond which we must recognize, like Kant, that an affinity exists between the subject and the something which is other than the subject. The incompatibility between the requirement of objective experience and the stipulation that it is the human mind which structures experience does not arise because the contrast is not as stark as the incompatibility suggests. In interpreting Kant, it is useful to think of concepts structuring experience to a degree, but beyond that, the opposition becomes too strict. The doctrine of the Schematism is a preface to this fact. The metaphor of affinity as an expression of Kant's intention is reinforced by the specific manner in which he distinguishes analytic from synthetic judgements. In 'The originality of Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements', Allison argues that it is the material role which Kant assigns to synthetic judgement that ensures the originality of his distinction. Kant's contemporary Eberhard and the twentiethcentury commentator Lovejoy dismiss his distinction as nothing more than a rehash of the identical-non-identical distinction put into currency by the Leibniz-Wolff school. Traditionally, an analytic judgement simply explicates what is already contained in the concept of its subject, whilst a synthetic judgement adds to the determination of its subject by predicating a quality not already included in the concept of its subject. With the intuitive model of knowledge advanced by Leibniz, a concept completely determines an object, so synthetic judgement has no real work to do. However, with Kant, synthetic judgement is a cognitive process which subsumes an intuition under a concept to determine a particular, the subject of the judgement. The Kantian twist is that synthetic judgement is distinguished from analytic judgement by being an active, material extension of knowledge. It is this determinate opening to intuition which to Allison separates Kant's distinction from that of his predecessors. Whereas Allison looks at the analytic-synthetic distinction via the exercise of determination, Beck approaches the subject by considering the role definition plays within it. Despite the difference in emphasis, Beck's conclusion is very much akin to Allison's. The dispute over whether Kant sometimes affirmed judgements to be synthetic which we nowadays would take to be analytic Beck thinks can be mollified by again recognizing Kant's novel understanding of the synthetic. Kant's opponents generally take the analytic-synthetic distinction to rely on the finite definition of a subject concept, but Beck proposes that, for Kant, what marks the divide is the extraconceptual condition which ultimately makes a concept indefinable. Synthetic judgements, or judgements of experience, arise through the necessary interaction between sensibility and understanding; they involve the bringing of intuitions under concepts.

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Now, definitions are really conceptual relations, yet concepts alone cannot admit sensible, source material; this is the province of intuition. Beck exhumes the Kantian conviction that it is a judgement's opening to intuition which determines its epistemic status. A finite definition of the concept of the subject is precluded because what finally gives meaning to the concept is the condition of sensibility. Synthetic judgements are those whose reference is obtained not through definition but through intuition. How does Kant argue for this opening to intuition? An intuition is the direct contact that we, as experiencing subjects, have with each of the objects in our experience; every object, as we experience it, is represented by a particular intuition. On this account, experience is necessarily discursive: a concept must apply to an object (represented by an intuition) for the possibility of empirical knowledge. Rosenberg, in his 'Transcendental arguments revisited', shows how the notion of a transcendental argument connects with Kant's assertion that experience is necessarily discursive. A transcendental argument is generally taken to be an argument which legitimizes the use of certain key concepts (the categories) by evincing their authority as the necessary conditions for experience. Rosenberg, however, offers an equivalent definition whereby a transcendental argument is an argument whose conclusion makes possible the very experience which is its own ground of proof. He is working against the notion that the categories are a fixed set of a priori conditions; the danger, he claims, is that Kant, in setting down the categories, simply made universal what was only the theory of his time. Rosenberg, with his definition of a transcendental argument, wants to promote the idea that concepts and their objects evolve through time so that experience is always preserved as a discursive act. The notion of a fixed set of concepts is replaced by the notion of a conceptual core which is continually undergoing revision. What Rosenberg wants to stress is that successive conceptual cores will be justified transcendentally by the fact that their employment makes accessible the very experiences to which they are applied. The Critique of Pure Reason is a revision of the philosophical understanding of how we conceptualize reality. The thesis advanced by the Critique is that a necessary affinity exists between the experiencing subject and the objects of experience. Using this affinity, the two principal arguments in the work evince the possibility of knowledge within experience and the impossibility of knowledge beyond the limits of experience: the former is confirmed by the fact that we do have experience and the latter by the fact that concepts applied outside their experiential context only generate speculative metaphysics. Concepts, Kant announces, are not detached, intellectual items which we happen to bring to objects but dynamic components in the production of experience. We enjoy the

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Immanuel Kant

experience of an objective world because concepts are always already engaged in rendering the objects of experiences intelligible, Clive Cazeaux Ruth F. Chadwick

1 Knowledge as a Relation and Knowledge as an Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason*

University of Wales College of Cardiff

Ermanno Bencivenga

Kant was very proud of his Copernican Revolution. So it is a bit ironical that the exact nature of this revolution should have turned out to be as obscure and controversial as it has.! In this essay I will try to provide a new way of looking at the issue. It is my hope that this new perspective will prove not only historically but also theoretically valuable; in particular, that it will present Kant's revolution as one that we might want to tak~ seriously, and maybe even think we still need.

I Two aspects of knowledge The subject matter of this section is our nai've conception of knowledge, so I had better explain what I take this naIve conception to be. Simply put, I think of the na'ive conception of knowledge as the way people conceive of knowledge before considering and taking seriously sceptical objections to the very possibility of knowledge. Notice that there need be nothing particularly naIve in this 'naIve' conception: it may be a quite sophisticated and formalized piece of analysis. And one need not think that only naIve people have the conception in question. You may well think that sceptical doubts are essentially futile, and that the most appropriate response to them is to forget about them; if you do, you probably hold something quite close to the naIve conception I have in mind, but this does not make you at all naive. Clearly, I am using the word 'na'ive' in a technical sense, But this sense is not new, Nobody who talks about 'naIve set theory' means to imply by their choice of words that either Cantor or his theory were naIve; what this choice of words emphasizes is the fact that the theory in question represents the most natural conception one might have of sets before considering the paradoxes and taking them seriously,

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The most crucial feature of the naIve conception of knowledge, for my present purposes, is the fact that this conception has several aspects. In other words, knowledge in this conception is many things at once. I will not consider here all the things knowledge is supposed to be 2 (in the conception in question; from now on, I will often omit this qualification). I will concentrate on two. On the one hand, knowledge is (conceived as) an experience 3 intelligent beings have, with specific features that distinguish it from such other experiences as believing, imagining, daydreaming, wishing, loving, hating. As opposed to wishing and loving, the experience of knowing is supposed to be low in emotional content, or at least whatever emotional content it has is supposed to be somehow irrelevant to it. As opposed to believing and imagining, knowing is thought of as forced on us: I may believe or imagine what I like, but I may not always know what I like, and often what I know I don't like. Also, knowledge is conceived as an incorrigible experience: if I have an experience of knowledge e at time t, then no further experience of knowledge can contradict e (in some sense to be specified)4. If I believe that e is an experience of knowledge, and some further experience that I take to be of knowledge contradicts e, then I must revise my former belief about e, and recognize that e was not an experience of knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge is (conceived as) a (binary) relation, in the following sense: having an experience of knowledge also is being in a relation with an object distinct from that experience. s If a has the relation of knowledge to b, then a is the knower and b is the known. The knower must be an object of a special kind: since it is also the object that has the (conscious) experience of knowledge, it must be a conscious, intelligent being, in short, a subject. As for the nature of the known, the matter is more controversial. Nowadays, it would be natural to think of the known as a proposition; in linguistic jargon, it would be natural to think that the primary construction of the verb 'to know' is the construction 'X knows that A'. As an alternative to this propositional construal, we might have an objectual construal of the relation: in this construal, subjects would not know (only) propositions but in general objects, and the primary construction of the verb 'to know' would be 'X knows Y'. So whereas in the propositional construal I could only know propositions about this table, in the objectual construal I would know the table. Given Kant's preference for the objectual mode,6 I, too, will favour it here, but nothing essential hinges on this decision: virtually the same points I will make could be made in propositional terms. In the naIve conception, the relational and the experiential aspects of knowledge are connected in a precise way. The connection is as follows: knowledge is the kind of experience it is because it is the kind of relation it is. The relation between a knower and a known (in the objectual

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construal) involves at least the awareness on the part of the knower of the existence and/or (part of) the structure of the known, where the known is a determinate object with a determinate structure, and awareness is conceived in general as some kind of mirroring, as a function whose arguments are whatever the awareness is an awareness of.? So it is not surprising that the experience of knowledge should be conceived as being largely independent of the emotions and preferences of the subject, in fact as forced on the subject (in the sense explained above): the subject may have had a (causal) role in bringing about the object of knowledge, but now that the issue is simply one of becoming aware of the existence and structure of that object, the subject's inclinations have little or nothing to do with the success of the operation. As for incorrigibility, either something has a given structure (at a given time) or it does not, so if we become aware of the existence and/or structure of something (at a given time), there is no way we can later become aware of its nonexistence or of its having a different structure (at the same time).

II Hume's attack

We know that Hume launched a sustained attack against the naIve conception of knowledge. It is not often pointed out, however, that his criticisms were not directed against all aspects of that conception equally, and as a result are not equally destructive of all those aspects. , Clearly, these criticisms are quite formidable with respect to the relational aspect of knowledge. There is no reason to think - Hume claims - that the subjective necessity by which we associate causes and effects is indication of any other kind of (objective) necessity, that is, that this experience constitutes the awareness on the part of the subject of the (necessary) structure of any other object (or state of affairs). And these remarks can be generalized. There is no reason to think of any experience as establishing any connection with any object distinct from the experience: a simple mental experiment (of the 'brain-in-the-vat' kind) will show that it is perfectly possible for the subject to have exactly the experiences it has without its being in a relation with anything beyond the experiences themselves. s Consider, however, the following passages: In order to justify myself, I must distinguish in the imagination betwixt the principles which are permanent, irresistible, and universal, such as the customary transition from causes to effects, and from effects to causes: And the principles, which are changeable, weak, and irregular .... The former are the foundation of all our thoughts and

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Immanuel Kant actions, so that upon their removal human nature must immediately perish and go to ruin. 9 Had not the presence of an object instantly excited the idea of those objects, commonly conjoined with it, all our knowledge [!] must have been limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and senses; and we should never have been able to adjust means to ends, or employ our natural powers, either to the producing of good, or avoiding of evil. 10

One way of interpreting these passages is to say that, while Hume questioned the relational character of our (alleged) knowledge of causes and effects, he did not question that this 'knowledge' was an experience of a very special kind, and in fact was ready to use the word 'knowledge' (without scare-quotes) to refer to it. We might even go so far as finding, in the adjectives used by Hume, evidence for a substantial agreement between him and the naIve epistemologist on what kind of experience knowledge (of causes and effects) is. It is independent of the particular subject ('universal'), forced on the subject (,irresistible'), and incorrigible ('permanent'). These remarks, too, can be generalized from our knowledge of causes and effects to knowledge in general; if they are, we realize that Hume's attack - whatever force it is taken to have against the relational aspect of knowledge - may have none against the experiential aspect.

III The Revolution Now turn to Kant. We know that it was his 'recollection' of Hume that 'first interrupted. . . [Kant's] dogmatic slumber', 11 we know that according to Kant Hume's position 'deserved the concentrated attention of the brighter spirits of his day' but in fact 'suffered the usual misfortune of metaphysicians, of not being understood', 12 and we know that Kant's solution of the problem raised by Hume was in the form of some kind of revolution. What kind of revolution? Here is one of the ways Kant himself describes it:

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of knowledge in terms of a correct (or true) representation of reality, and of correctness (or truth) in terms of correspondence with that reality. But what does it mean, on the other hand, to say that objects should conform to knowledge? My answer to this question is consistent with my earlier remarks relative to Hume (and is motivated by them). Whereas in the naIve conception of knowledge the relational aspect is primary and the experiential aspect is based on it, in the new revolutionary framework Kant takes the experiential aspect - the one that Hume's criticism had left substantially untouched - to be primary and the relational aspect to be the dependent one. Whereas in the naIve conception knowledge is the kind of experience it is because it is the kind of relation it is to objects (knowledge conforms to objects), in the revolutionary framework knowledge is the kind of relation it is because it is the kind of experience it is, because it has the kind of (phenomenological) structure it has; in fact, it is its structure as an experience that determines the structure of the objects it puts us in relation with (objects conform to knowledge). In what follows, I will try to make all of this precise.

IV Knowledge-of-objects It will be useful to begin with an analogy. Looking for unicorns does not put you in relation with any unicorn, and wanting a sloop may be simply wanting 'relief from slooplessness'.13 The failure to establish any relation in these cases (to a unicorn, a sloop, or anything else) is evidenced by the fact that the relevant sentences lack existential import: even though

(1) I am looking for a unicorn is true, (2) For some x, x is a unicorn and I am looking for x is not true; in fact it is not even true that

Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects .... We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. (B xvi; Kemp Smith's translation) However, the description is not very clear. We can probably understand what it means for knowledge to conform to objects: it means thinking

(3) For some x, I am looking for x. But on the other hand, unicorn and sloops still matter: looking for a unicorn is not the same as looking for a butterfly, and wanting a sloop is not the same as wanting ice-cream. Some mention of unicorns and sloops is still needed to explain what kinds of experiences would count as looking for a unicorn and wanting a sloop.

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One way to signal the 'intermediate'14 state of 'unicorn' in 'looking for a unicorn' is to substitute (4) I am looking-for-a-unicorn for (1). In this way, we emphasize that what we are talking about is a property of mine (and of the experience I am having), and that though this property is certainly different from the relevant property in the case of (5) I am looking-for-a-butterfly, no relation to a unicorn or to anything else is stated in (4). Quine called this sense of looking for something notional. IS In away, the denomination may be misleading: when I look for a unicorn, I don't look for the notion of a unicorn, I look for a concrete, bona fide unicorn. But there is a sense in which the denomination is accurate: having the notion of a unicorn is all I need in order to look for a unicorn. It is not necessary for me to be acquainted with any unicorn; in fact it is not even necessary that there be any unicorn. Turn to knowledge. In the naIve conception, when I say (6) I know a table, I am asserting the existence of a relation betwen myself and a table, and if what I say is true, then there is such a relation between me and a table, so that it would be legitimate to rewrite (6) as (7) For some x, x is a table and I know x. But suppose now that you accept the most sweeping form of the 'Humean' objection, and you find no compelling reason to think that any experience puts you in relation with any table, or in general with any object distinct from the experience itself. Still, you may want to mention specific objects, or objects in general, to characterize an experience that you still call knowledge. That is, you may want to say: knowledge of a table is an experience that has exactly those features that it would have if this experience consisted of becoming aware of the existence and/or structure of a table. Since an experience of this (hypothetical) kind would have to be universal, irresistible, and so on, the experience of knowing a table must be universal, irresistible, and so on, and this whether or not in fact this experience puts you in relation with a table or with anything at all, whether or not (7), or for that matter

21

(8) For some x, I know x is true. Just as we did with looking for unicorns, it is natural to signal our changed attitude with respect to knowledge by substituting something like (9) I know-a-table for (6). The substitution emphasizes that what we are concerned with is a property of mine (and of the experience I am having), and that no relation is stated by (9). Again in analogy with the experience of looking for something, I need not be acquainted with any tables to characterize the experience of knowing-a-table, and in general I need not be acquainted with any object to characterize the experience of knowingan-object. It is not even necessary for me that any tables or objects exist: all that is necessary is to have the notion of what it is to be a table or an object. It is a major claim of mine here that Kant followed exactly this line of thought in his approach to the problems raised by Hume. I can defend my claim in some textual detail by considering a passage (from the first edition Transcendental Deduction) in which Kant claims he wants to make clear 'what we mean by the expression "an object of representation" , (A 104-5).16 This claim suggests that the passage in question is a natural one to look at if we want to get a better understanding of the obscure notion that objects should 'conform to knowledge'. Kant begins with a question: What ... is to be understood when we speak of an object corresponding to, and consequently also distinct from, our knowledge? The question is a challenge for the naIve conception of knowledge: if knowledge is awareness of an entity distinct from the awareness itself, how are we to conceptualize a reference to this entity? The reason why this challenge is a very serious one is indicated immediately: outside our knowledge we have nothing which we could set over against this knowledge as corresponding to it. In other words, we are locked inside our experience: we cannot 'get out' of it and compare it with some independent reality. For all we know (think of the 'brain-in-the-vat' experiment), our experience could be all that there is. So reference to an object is really reference to an unknown:

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Immanuel Kant It is easily seen that this object must be thought only as something in

general

V Appearances

= x ...

Or, even more strongly, it is an empty reference: we have to deal only with the manifold of our representations, and. that x (the object) which corresponds to them is nothing to us - being, as it is, something that has to be distinct from all our representations. But this does not mean that the reference is useless. Why? Because we know what it would be for our experience to relate to objects: Now we find that our thought of the relation of all knowledge to its object carries with it an element of necessity; the object is viewed as that which prevents our modes of knowledge from being haphazard or arbitrary, and which determines them a priori in some definite fashion. And we can express this condition as a property of the experience, in particular, as some kind of internal consistency: For in so far as they are to relate to an object, they must necessarily agree with one another, that is, must process that unity which constitutes the concept of an object. 17 The conclusion, quite naturally, is that the unity which the object makes necessary can be nothing else than the formal unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of representations. It is only when we have thus produced synthetic unity in the manifold of intuition that we are in a position to say that we know the object. 17 So we start out with the idea that the object known is something over and above our experience, we realize that this idea does not have an experiential fulfilment, but we notice that the idea can be used to characterize a property of experiences, and we decide to say that when an experience has that property, then it is the experience of knowing an object. In the interest of clarity, it would have been best if Kant had called the experience (as I did) one of knowing-an-object, or some variant thereof, but on the one hand his style is usually quite colloquial, so that he prefers to give old terms new definitions rather than introducing new terms,18 and on the other hand what I just said is only one half of the story he wants to tell.

So far I have explained how Kant tries to salvage the experiential aspect of knowledge from Hume's attack, but I have not yet supported my claim that he ultimately wants the relational aspect of knowledge to be based on its experiential aspect. I turn now to this second task. Defining a sense in which knowledge is a relation (at this stage of the game) means finding a way to de-hyphenate 'knowledge-of-objects', and therefore reassigning existential import to knowledge claims. Basing the sense in which knowledge is a relation on the sense in which knowledge is an experience means asserting that it is only by one or more statements of the form (10) X knows- Y

that I can justify a statement of the form (11) X knows Z.

and ultimately a statement of the form (12) For some

z,

X knows

z.

There are two reasons why it is difficult to understand fully how Kant achieved all of this. One has to do with the intrinsic complications of the revolution he was attempting, the other with the limitations of the philosophical language he had inherited. The combination of these difficulties often makes Kant's statements extremely confusing. To avoid the same impression of confusion, I will first give a description of Kant's move that disregards the two difficulties, and then consider the difficulties in turn. The simple (and partly misleading) formulation goes as follows. Normally, we think of objects as primary, and of an object being represented as an accident of that object. The representation itself, of course, we think of as an accident of a subject. It is in this general conceptual framework that the naIve conception of knowledge finds its most natural place, and with it all the problems it brings about. But suppose now that we take representations, or in general experience, as primary. In general, a representation is the representation of something. My representation of this table is a representation of this table, and your representation of Pegasus is a representation of Pegasus. Following upon a long tradition, we may call a representation A the entity which is a representation of the intentional object of A, and call

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Immanuel Kant

intentional object every entity that is the intentional object of some representation. Now suppose that I have a representation of a green monster. The intentional object of my representation, of course, is a green monster, but my representation of it does not happen to cohere with the rest of my experiences in the way found necessary by Kant to call that representation knowledge-of-an-object (in this case, knowledge-of-a-greenmonster). For brevity, say that my representation does not have the property C (for connectedness) .19 Still, I may think of my representation as establishing a relation between me and a(n intentional) green monster, and I may express this relation by saying

a statement like (14) that can justify the truth of a statement like (15) (though, of course, nothing like that is needed to justify the truth of (18) I represent a brown chair).20 Suppose now that we decide to call the intentional object of a representation with property C an appearance. Then a lot of what I said above will begin to sound very Kantian. For Kantian appearances are defined to be the objects of representations (more precisely, of empirical intuitions; see A 20/B 34). They are also quite clearly thought of as dependent on experience; a particularly good statement of this position is the following:

(13) I represent a green monster. On the other hand, suppose that I have a representation of a brown chair, and suppose that this representation does have the property C. Again, I may think that this representation establishes a relation between me and an (intentional) object, and I may well decide to call this relation one of knowledge. That is, I may decide that because (14) I know-a-brown-chair is true, (15) I know a brown chair is also true, where the brown chair is an intentional brown chair. Proceeding in this way, I can recover knowledge as a relation. In fact, if I allow for quantification over intentional objects, it is perfectly legitimate for me to rewrite (15) as (16) For some x, x is a brown chair and I know x. Also, since a representation is practically by definition adequate to its intentional object, this move will not force me to give any new construal of the kind of relation knowledge is. Knowledge will still be (intensionally) what it was before, that is, (15) will still entail something like (17) I am aware of the existence and/or (part of) the structure of a brown chair. And finally, knowledge as a relation will be based on knowledge as an experience exactly in the sense required on p. 23: it is only the truth of

Save through its relation to a consciousness that is at least possible, appearance could never be for us an object of knowledge, and so would be nothing to us; and since it has in itself no objective reality, but exists only in being known, it would be nothing at all. (A 120, my italics) And finally, the relation of appearances to what I called knowledge-ofan-object is easy to establish: Since truth consists in the agreement of knowledge with the object, it will at once be seen that ... appearance, in contradistinction to the representations of apprehension, can be represented as an object distinct from them only if it stands under a rule which distinguishes it from every other apprehension and necessitates some one particular mode of connection of the manifold. (A 191/B 236) So much for what is simple about the issue. In order to explore the complications now, it may be useful to begin with some of the qualms I have with my own exposition above. In the last few years, Richard Aquila has suggested in a number of places that Kantian appearances should be regarded as intentional objects. 2! On the face of it, we agree on the matter, but I think that the agreement is a purely verbal one. For consider the following passage: Kant avoids [the] supposition [that appearances be identical with some sort of transcendentally real particular] by suggesting that they are, in an important sense, not existing objects of any sort. They are merely intentional objects. 22 Quite simply, the point at issue here is that the sense in which appear-

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ances are 'not existing objects of any sort' is in the end not at all important for Kant. And understanding how this is the case will make us understand more clearly what the Copernican Revolution is. The Copernican Revolution is a paradigm shift. And more importantly, it is a paradigm shift in our general conceptual framework, that is, in the way we think of (conceptualize) the whole of our experience, not just a specialized part of it. But how can a shift like this be itself conceptualized, if what it asks us to do is to give up the whole way we normally conceptualize things? And, given the strict connection between our conceptual framework and our language, how can it be expressed? Maybe there is no answer to the questions above. Maybe a change like the one I am talking about is impossible. 23 But it is important to understand what such an answer could not be. It could not consist in a simple description of the result of the Revolution. For such a description would have to be formulated in some conceptual framework; but if we formulated it in the old framework we would be missing the point, and the new framework is supposedly not available yet. What, then, is the alternative? Well, maybe the alternative is to remind ourselves that a revolution is after all an operation and that the right way to characterize an operation is not that of describing its result but that of giving the instructions necessary for performing it. These instructions, and the operation itself, may take time to process. During the processing, there will be intermediate steps to go through, ladders and other tools to be used, but it is possible (and likely) that once we get to the final stage some of these implements may be disposed of. The role the notion of an intentional object plays for me in characterizing Kant's Revolution is exactly that of a ladder eventually to be thrown away, of an auxiliary notion which is very useful in the course of the process but has no crucial significance at the end of it. Essentially, the Copernican paradigm shift consists in going from conceptualizing representations as representations of objects to conceptualizing objects as objects of representations. This operation is best performed in two steps. First, we temporarily 'bracket' all ontological assumptions, thus creating a neutral jargon in which to characterize the new relation between objects and representations. It is at this stage that the notion of an intentional object is useful, for it provides a very natural way of doing the bracketing: intentional objects are (in the Meinongian sense) 'beyond' ontological considerations. With this notion at our disposal, we can say things like 'Appearances are the intentional objects of representations that count as knowledge-of-objects.' Then, however, it is pointed out that (some of) the objects conceptualized in the new way are the only existing objects, the only objects that are in any sense that is at all important. 24 At that stage, it is possible to forget the bracketing and the attending notion of an intentional object.

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Saying at that stage that appearances are merely intentional objects amounts to dramatically misperceiving the change in values that is implicit in this (as in any other) conceptual revolution. It amounts to misperceiving the fact that the notions of an object and of what it is to be real (as opposed to 'merely intentional') have been entirely reconceptualized. It amounts to perversely looking at the result of the Revolution from the standpoint of the old conceptual framework. 25 So the notion of an intentional object is for me only a tool for the formulation of the Copernican Revolution. It is also, however, a very useful tool. It makes it possible, as I pointed out above, to have a neutral language in which to express the Revolution. And an additional problem Kant had (additional, that is, to characterizing the Revolution) is that he did not have this useful tool. This is where the second of the two difficulties mentioned on p. 23 comes in. An intentional object is somewhat intermediate between 'real' objects on the one hand, and representations or states of mind on the other. Like 'real' objects, an intentional object is an object, with properties like being red or round, not (only) like being vivid or recollected or before one's mind. Like states of mind, an intentional object is dependent on (the having of) experience. But the philosophical language in which Kant was educated, and in which most of his own teaching was conducted, did not allow for (any reference to) such intermediate entities. In that language, one could refer to things (real things), and to determinations of things, and everything had to fit one category or the other. We know that Kant usually lectured in metaphysics from Baumgartern's Metaphysica. 26 In §191 of this work we read Ens vel non potest exsistere, nisi ut determinatio alterius, (in alio), vel potest .... Prius accidens (praedicamentale, ... cuius esse est inesse ... ) posterius est substantia, ens per se subsistens, ... quod potest existere, licet non sit in alio, licet non sit determinatio alterius. In particular, representations are accidents: Cogito, mutatur anima mea .... Ergo cogitationes sunt accidentia animae meae . . . (§505) Cogitationes sunt repraesentationes. Ergo anima mea est vis repraesentativa. (§506) And if an accident is taken to be a substance, the word 'phenomenon' is used to refer to it: Accidentia, si videntur per se subsistentia, sunt phaenomena substantiata. (§193)

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If we think of the importance of this word 'phenomenon' for Kant - in particular, of its intimate relation with 'appearance' - such a purely negative characterization may well be seen as a problem. Not surprisingly, the problem infects 'appearance', too. Here is the relevant definition:

Quod non tantum videtur, set et est, verum, quod tan tum videtur non est, apparens dicitur. (§12) And Baumgarten's further uses of apparens (for example at §97, §337) are consistent with this definition. Kant's comment on §193 above, as reported in Metaphysik Herder, is only a scanty note: Bin Accidens durch eine confuse Vorstellung als eine Substanz gedacht. z.E. RaumY Taking this note seriously, one could qualify space as a phenomenon only in the negative sense of being a representation mistakenly taken to have subsistence of its own. But of course, Kant wants to assert the phenomenal character of space in a much more positive sense. For example, he wants to say that perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside me [in space] and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me. (B 275) So certainly he does not want to reduce space to a representation (or even less, to a misrepresentation), but notice that the metaphysical terminology he is working with does not leave him much of a choice. If something is not a thing subsisting in itself, it must be an accident inhering in a thing subsisting in itself; he does not want to say that space is the former, so he is occasionally forced to say that it is the latter. If I am right, however, he really means neither. What he means is that the whole conceptual framework underlying the above distinction between things and accidents was bankrupted by Hume, and a new conceptual framework must replace it. The notion of an intentional object could be used effectively to introduce the new framework, but Kant lacks this resource. In its absence, he tries different strategies of expression, and the result is often confusing. To illustrate, I turn my attention now to the most typical of these (apparent) confusions. Given that the status of an intentional object is somewhat intermediate between that of an object and that of a representation, it is quite natural, if your language does not allow for reference to such entities, and if

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appearances are best understood (at least provisionally) as intentional objects, to characterize appearances by emphasizing sometimes their similarity to real objects, and sometimes their similarity to representations. This is exactly what happens to Kant, and, interestingly enough, he regards such shifts to emphasis as just that, shifts of emphasis, whereas his critics, who usually work with a philosophical language very similar to the one that made things so difficult for Kant, often conclude that some dramatic change has occurred in his philosophy. Take the Refutation of Idealism, for example. In the first edition, Kant says things like: In our system, on the other hand, these external things, namely matter, are in all their configurations and alterations nothing but mere appearances, that is, representations in us, of the reality of which we are immediately conscious. (A 371-2; my italics) these are merely appearances, that is, mere kinds of representation, which are never to be met with save in us, and the reality of which depends on immediate consciousness, just as does the consciousness of my own thoughts. (A 372; my italics) In the second edition, on the other hand, he says: All determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception. But this permanent cannot be an intuition in me [my italics]. For all grounds of determination of my existence which are to be met with in me are representations; and as representations themselves require a permanent distinct from them, in relation to which their change, and so my existence in the time wherein they change, may be determined. (B 275, as altered in B xxxix footnote) Now how can anybody in their right mind say that the move from the first to the second of the above formulations is 'one affecting the method of proof only'? (B xxxix) Was Kant crazy, or had his 'well-attested desire to appear consistent ... led him to use the rhetorical context of a preface to attempt to persuade his reader (or, for that matter, himself[!]) that there had been no change in his view when in fact there had been'?28 Reference to (self-)deception should be a last resort in doing the history of philosophy. And, in fact, no such reference is needed here if we accept the explanation I proposed above. According to this explanation, when Kant says 'appearances are only representations', he means that appearances have (provisionally) the same dependent metaphysical

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status as representations, and the reason why he says it that way is that the philosophical language he is accustomed to offers him no other way to say it. 29 On the other hand, he is struggling to say something different from what most of his critics understood. Thus, in the first edition Refutation, we also find the following statement: External objects (bodies), however, are mere appearances, and are therefore nothing but a species of my representations, the objects of which are something only through these representations. (A 370, my italics) Here the familiar claim is reiterated that appearances are only representations, but a new character enters the picture: the objects of the representations. If we read the whole section as a reformulation of Berkeleian subjectivism, the introduction of this new character simply makes no sense, but if I am right and the passage only has the semblance of Berkeleian subjectivism while trying to tell a whole new different story, then the new character introduced here should become the main character, and the fact that Kant introduces it in spite of the linguistic limitations he is fighting with is evidence of his genius. Within my approach, I can even explain the sense in which the second edition Refutation represents a change in 'the method of proof'. In the first edition, Kant was carried away by the improper statement that 'appearances are representations' and thought that our consciousness of representations was enough to prove the reality of appearances. In the second edition, he realized that our consciousness of representations of objects in space did not establish the reality of their objects, in the sense in which these (intentional) objects can be said to be real (which is also the sense in which objects simpliciter will be real after the Copernican Revolution has been completed), that is, as intentional objects of representations that count as knowledge-of-objects. Something more than the mere fact that we are conscious of them had to be proved of these representations, that is, that they have the property C. And one way to prove this is to argue that unless we had representations-of-objects-inspace with the property C we could not have the kind of consciousnessof-ourselves we apparently have. In other words, though the theory was still the same, the proof of the specific claim made in the Refutation had to be revised.

VI A moral In a recent article on the Refutation,30 Paul Guyer, after arguing for a radical difference between the two editions of the Refutation (and in

fact, an even more radical difference between the first edition Refutation and Kant's real 'intentions' on the matter, as they are supposedly made explicit in subsequent notes of his), concludes that Kant simply dropped the assumption that the epistemological status of being an 'appearance,' or known through one of our own forms of intuition, required the ontological status of being a 'representation,' an actual state or modification of the self, and thus he could exploit the possibility that we could know that something exists independently of us without knowing what it is like independently of us. It is not my intention here to challenge Guyer's proposal in any detail. I only want to point out that the two ontological possibilities mentioned by Guyer (that is, that something is 'a state or modification of the self' or that it 'exists independently of us') fall well within the conceptual framework that (if I am right) Kant was challenging. I have suggested in this essay that the best way to begin to understand Kant's appearances is as entities that neither are states or modifications of the self nor exist independently of it (or better, of experience). However, I think that this intermediate metaphysical status, and the conceptual shift it prepares us for, are just as widely misunderstood in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy as they were in Kant's time, and Guyer's statement quoted above is some indication of this. My general view of the Critique is that of a large work-in-progress, that needs to be rewritten once the philosophical language which its new and revolutionary perspective requires has been invented. 31 People like Brentano and Husserl did a lot to invent this new language, though they probably did not do all that was required; analytic philosophy, however, has devoted precious little attention to these efforts so far. Largely for this reason, analytic philosophy may still need its Copernican Revolution, and in the absence of such a revolution we may have the same problems understanding Kant which his contemporaries had.

Notes

* I thank Kent Baldner, Gordon Brittan and the referees of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. 1. As Henry Allison points out in his Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press 1983), p. 28, there are two main problems with the 'Copernican Revolution'. One is the problem of understanding what revolution it is: the other is the problem of understanding what is Copernican about it. Here I am interested in the first problem (as is Allison). 2. For example, I think that in the na'ive conception knowledge is also a tool,

32 Immanuel Kant and a very useful one for getting aroundlin the world. But here I won't discuss this pragmatic dimension. 3. In this essay, I use 'experience' in an informal, colloquial sense, not in the technical Kantian sense of 'empirical knowledge'. 4. Such a specification is not essential here. But a natural way to begin to work towards it is the following: an experience e2 contradicts an experience el if a judgement made on the basis of e2 contradicts a judgement made on the basis of el' Note also that I am not in any way suggesting that these features of the experience of knowledge be all in some sense internal to the experience, that is, that one experiences them while having a cognitive experience. In fact I may never have a belief that I believe to be incorrigible, and this is perfectly compatible with the conjunction of the following: that I in fact do have cognitive experiences, and that I conceive of knowledge as incorrigible. 5. In the objectual construal characterized below (and adopted in this chapter), I can of course know an experience el of mine, but then one usually thinks that the experience e2 of knowing el is distinct from el' 6. In fact, Rolf George has recently claimed that 'reference' may be a better translation than 'knowledge' for Kant's Erkenntnis. See his 'Kant's sensationism', Synthese 47 (1981), 241. Other authors find it more appropriate to use the word 'cognition' to translate Erkenntnis, and this translation certainly fits both Kant's definition of Erkenntnis and grammar better than 'knowledge' does. For on the one hand, as the OED tells us, a cognition is (among other things) 'a product of the action of knowing', and that could very well be a (conscious) representation of an object (which is what Kant says an Erkenntnis is, at A 320/B 376). On the other, the translation 'knowledge' leaves us with no really good options for translating Kant's plural form Erkenntnisse. However, in this essay I will stick to using 'knowledge', for the following reasons. First, I am not concerned here with technical issues of translation; in particular, none of the points I will make depends on the translation of Erkenntnisse. Second, there is after all a strict connection between 'cognition' and 'knowledge', since 'cognition' is usually defined in terms of 'knowledge' (or 'knowing', as in the above quote from the OED), so whatever problems Kant may have concerning cognition(s) admit of an immediate reformulation in terms of 'knowledge'. And finally, 'knowledge' is (but 'cognition' is not) central to our philosophical language (and conceptual framework), so it is a better choice if our main purpose is that of emphasizing the contemporary relevance of Kant's problems. 7. In general, the knowledge relation is also taken to involve something else, that is, (at least) the awareness of some justification for the adequacy of the mirroring. But I can leave such further issues aside here. 8. I am not concerned here with the extent to which Hume himself was aware of this generalization of his objection. But I find it interesting to point out that his identification of perceptions and objects (for which see, for example, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 202) seems to be a natural consequence of the generalization in question. For if no experience ever reaches an object distinct from the experience itself, and if one still wants to think of the experience as establishing a relation, then it is natural to think of the relation as a relation to the experience itself. 9. A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 225. 10. Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 55.

Critical Assessments 33 11. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950), p. 8. 12. ibid., p. 6. 13. The expression is W. V. O. Quine's, as are many of the ideas that follow about the logic of 'looking for' and 'wanting'. See his 'Quantifiers and propositional attitudes', in The Ways of Paradox (New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1966), pp. 183-94. 14. The word 'intermediate' is used in this sense by David Kaplan. See his 'Quantifying in', in Words and Objections: Essays on the Work of W. V. Quine, edited by D. Davidson and J. Hintikka (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1969), pp. 178-214. 15. 'Quantifiers and propositional attitudes', p. 183. 16. Passages like this one have suggested to a number of authors reflections similar to mine. Arthur Melnick, for example, in his Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1973), says that 'there is to be found in the Transcendental Deduction an analysis of the notion of an object (as essentially an epistemic notion) that in itself suffices to establish the point that an ontology cannot be a feature of the world itself, but must bring in reference to how a subject's experience is connected to his judgemental apparatus' (pp. 143-4) and that 'involved in the very concept of substance is that it is a way of organizing our experience' (p. 139). But I think that, to the extent to which Melnick and I are saying analogous things, my terminology makes things a little clearer, and in any case the role played by the concept of an object in organizing our experience is for me only part of what Kant wants to talk about. The other (and, I think, more important) part I discuss in the next section. 17. Essentially the same point made in this last quotation is made in the following passage, too:

If we enquire what new character relation to an object confers upon our representations, what dignity they thereby acquire, we find that it results only in subjecting the representations to a rule, and so in necessitating us to connect them in some specific manner: and conversely, that only in so far as our representations are necessitated in a certain order as regards their timerelations do they acquire objective meaning. (A 197/B 242-3) 18. Think, for example, of how Kant uses the word 'metaphysics'. Sometimes (as in B 395 footnote) the word refers to traditional metaphysics, which is proved to be impossible (at least as a science), and sometimes (as in A xx) it refers to transcendental philosophy, which of course Kant thinks is possible and is (going to become) a science. 19. To simplify the exposition, in this essay I am leaving aside the role that sensibility plays within the Kantian construal of knowledge. But note that a careful unpacking of the notion of connectedness mentioned here would have to characterize it as connectedness with some perception, as specified in the Second Postulate of Empirical Thought (A 218/B 266, A 225/B 272). 20. It may be useful to point out explicitly that I have no suggestion to offer here (and, I think, Kant has none in the Critique) as to how one is supposed to decide in concrete cases on the truth of statements like (15). This is an empirical question. What I am concerned with is the way we conceptualize the truth of such statements. 21. See his 'Things in themselves and appearances: intentionality and reality in Kant', Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 61 (1979), 293-308; 'Intentional

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objects and Kantian appearances', Philosophical Topics 12 (1981), 9-37, and Representational Mind (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). 22. 'Things in themselves', 302. A number of similar statements can be found elsewhere in Aquila's work. 23. That is, maybe all that we can do is remind ourselves critically of the necessity of the conceptual shift, without ever being able to see things the new way. This is what Kant seems to suggest when he talks about the 'natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason' (A 298/B 354), and claims that transcendental illusion can no more be prevented than we can prevent the sea appearing higher at the horizon than at the shore ... or ... than the astronomer can prevent the moon from appearing larger at its rising .... (A 297/B 354) 24. The reader may wonder what happens to things-in-themselves in this new perspective. Simply put, after the revolution a thin-in-itself becomes the (nonactual) object of an idea. I have explored this issue in some detail in my 'Identity, appearances, and things in themselves', Dialogue 23 (1984), 421-37. 25. A similar misperception is involved, I think, in Robert Howell's work. In his 'Kant's first-Critique theory of the transcendental object', Dialectica 35 (1931), 85-125, he correctly identifies Kant's concern as that of achieving de re knowledge via de dicto thought. But then he looks at this operation from what Kant would call the standpoint of transcendental realism: that is, in the terms I am using here, he looks at the operation in question as the (attempted) achievement of de re knowledge of an object in the sense of the old conceptual framework. When things are looked at that way, it is inevitable to conclude (as he does) that 'Kant does face a serious problem, which may well be insoluble within his own terms, of how to reconcile the de dicto character of the transcendentalobject theory with the fact that human beings do have de re knowledge of single, individuated outer objects' (110). What Howell fails to appreciate, in my opinion, is the fact that Kant is redefining the notion of what is to be de re, and that under the new definition he really has no such serious problem at all. 26. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1963). 27. Ak. XXVIII.24. 28. The statement is Paul Guyer's, in his paper 'Kant's intentions in the refutation of idealism', The Philosophical Review 92 (1983), 329-83. See 331. 29. That Kant himself was somewhat aware of the limitations of his language is indicated by his pointing out that there are some key ambiguities in it. For example, he thinks that there is an ambiguity concerning the expression 'outside us' (and hence, I might add, the expression 'in us', too, which figures prominently in the passages quoted above from the Refutations of Idealism). The expression 'outside us' is thus unavoidably ambiguous in meaning, sometimes signifying what a thing-in-itself exists apart from us, and sometimes what belongs only to outer appearance. (A 373) Note also that I would offer a similar explanation for the cases in which Kant seems to fall into the opposite extreme. Take, for example, the following passage from Refiexionen 6323 (quoted by Guyer, 'Kant's intentions', 342):

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the actuality of this determination of [our] existence, [requires] an immediate consciousness of something outside me, which corresponds to these representations (and which does not exist merely in my representation (rather (as thing) in itself)). Again, I take it that in passages like this Kant is trying to make clear the objectual character of appearances, by contrasting them with representations, and once more feeling the need of something like the notion of an intentional object I am using. 30. 'Kant's Intentions', 377. 31. In my 'An epistemic theory of reference', The Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), 785-805, I face the same problem of expression, not in a context of history of philosophy, but in the course of discussing contemporary issues in the philosophy of language.

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Kemp Smith's Commentary, however, the reader is led to suppose that Kant himself used the expression:

Copernicus' Role in Kant's Revolution Norwood Russell Hanson

In opposition to common sense I dare to imagine some movement of the Earth ... since mathematicians have not (yet) agreed with each other, I was moved to think out a different scheme ... by supposing the Earth to move, demonstrations more secure than those of my predecessors (could) be found for the revolutions of the ... spheres ... all (celestial) phenomena follow from this (supposition). Nicholas Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul IlL! Like Copernicus, Kant sought to explain the properties of observed phenomena by postulating a kind of activity in the observer. This is the 'Copernican Revolution'. None the less, in expositions of Kant's metaphysics the expressions 'Copernican Revolution' and 'Copernican Hypothesis' have come to assume a perhaps unwarranted role. Commentators and historians of philosophy suggest that Kant himself actually used these phrases and that there is one and only one meaning in Kant's mind for such language. 2 Though these distinguished Kantian scholars intimate both that Kant used the expression 'the Copernican Revolution' and also that he meant to compare his revolution with that of Copernicus in one and only one way,3 the following analysis aims to show that it is still worth enquiring whether this is an adequate account of the connections between Copernicus and Immanuel Kant. Nowhere in either edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft does the phrase 'the Copernican Revolution' occur. Nor does the expression 'Copernican Hypothesis' occur either. In his translation of the Kritik, Professor N. Kemp Smith renders 'mit den ersten Gedanken des Kopernicus' as 'Copernicus' primary hypothesis'. 4 But he is at least cautious enough to temper this mistranslation by adding the German as well. In

[Kant's] 'Copernican hypothesis' ... he claims [is] merely a philosophical extension of the method of positive science) .... [Upon] the 'Copernican hypothesis' ... Kant dwells at some length. Kant's comparison of his new hypothesis to that of Copernicus .... The apparently objective movements of the fixed stars. .. are mere appearances, due to the projection of our own motion into the heavens ... it is this doctrine and this doctrine alone to which Kant is referring . . . in thus comparing his critical procedure to that of Copernicus ... etc. (pp. 19-22, my italics) Compare S. Alexander: 'Kant himself signalized the revolution which he believed himself to be effecting, as a Copernican revolution'.5 Lindsay writes: 'This new way of conceiving the possibility of a priori knowledge Kant compares to the revolution brought about in astronomy by Copernicus.' Lindsay then goes on to quote Kant as saying 'Copernicus' primary hypothesis ... '.6 How these otherwise scholarly writers can so wantonly render Gedanken as 'hypothesis' is baffling to me, unless, of course, they are simply forcing this English word on Kant to strengthen their own general interpretations of his philosophy. But Carl J. Friedrich is more careful and more respectful of his native language, and of Kant's ability to write in it, than are the afore-mentioned Britons. Friedrich translates 'den ersten Gedanken des Kopernicus' correctly as 'the first thought of Copernicus'. Hence he shows no tendency to make Kant characterize his own philosophy as a 'Copernican Revolution' or a 'Copernican Hypothesis'. Friedrich lets Kant's references to Copernicus serve only to indicate Kant's dissatisfaction with a chaos of existing theories, and his decision to abandon them and make trial of another. 7 Now what exactly does Kant say? In the 1787 Preface to the second edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, we read: The example of mathematics and natural science, which by a single and sudden revolution have become what they now are, seem to me sufficiently remarkable to suggest our considering what may have been the essential features in the changed point of view by which they have so greatly benefitted. Their success should incline us, at least by way of experiment, to imitate their procedure .... We should then be proceeding precisely in accordance with the first thought of Copernicus. Failing of satisfactory progress in explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that they all revolved around the

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Immanuel Kant spectator, he tried whether he might not have better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the stars to remain at rest. A similar experiment can be tried in metaphysics. (B xv-xvii) Similarly, the fundamental laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies gave established certainty to what Copernicus had at first assumed only as an hypothesis, and at the same time yielded proof of the invisible force (the Newtonian attraction) which holds the universe together. The latter would have remained forever undiscovered if Copernicus had not dared ... to seek the observed movements, not in the heavenly bodies, but in the spectator. (Based on Kemp Smith's translation, B xxii, note.)

The two expressions 'Copernican Revolution' and 'Copernican Hypothesis' do not occur in indexes to the other two Critiques, and particularly not in the fully indexed edition of Kant by F. Meiner. In fact, the entire Kantian corpus makes no reference to Copernicus other than the two occurrences (quoted above) in the Vorrede to the second edition of the Kritik der rein en Vernunft, added six years after the completion of the first edition. The Kant-lexikon of R. Eisler, usually reliable on the first Kritik, reveals no further references to Copernicus anywhere. s This is not only a matter of Kantian philology. Reference to the 'Copernican Revolution' has carried the burden of the most important expositions of Kant's philosophy. That so much weight should for so long have been placed on so tiny a textual foundation may encourage further questions about interpretation. In any case, philosophers have a duty initially to read Kant's words as Kant wrote them: 'What did he say?' is prior to 'What did he mean?' Concerning Kant's references to Copernicus, these two questions have been thoroughly confounded. The origin of the expression of course lies in the Vorrede. Perhaps the mischief consists in using 'revolution' in the first sentence of the paragraph beginning at the bottom of B xv (quoted above). But the preceding discussion leaves no doubt that the 'revolution' referred to here has nothing whatever to do with Copernicus. The Vorrede is addressed to a discussion of the affinities and differences between mathematics, physics and metaphysics. The first two disciplines, after a period of groping (Herumtappen) certainly became sciences. They entered upon the sicheren Gang einer Wissenschaft as a result of the 'revolution'. When referring to mathematics (in B xi) the word 'revolution' is italicized (gesperrt').9 Kant does not say upon whom the light of mathematics suddenly broke (ging ein Licht auf). With physics, the world had to wait longer for its revolution. Only 150 years before Kant, Bacon had 'inspired fresh vigour in those who were already on the way to (the discovery)'

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(B xii). It was with Galileo, Torricelli and Stahl that a light broke upon all students of nature; 'so ging allen Naturforschern ein Licht auf' (B xiii). They all had the vision to cast old theories aside in order to test some bold new hypothesis. When (at B xvi) Kant refers back to 'the examples of mathematics and natural science which by a single and sudden revolution have become what they now are', he is not making any reference to Copernicus and his heliocentric doctrine per se, but rather to the successful foundation of experimental physics by the great scientists of the seventeenth century. In B xv, Kant asks whether a change in the method of metaphysics, corresponding to these revolutions in mathematics and natural science, might not end its random groping (see B xv, Herumtappen); whether or not this can be done can only be discovered by a trial (B xvi). Similarly Copernicus, when he found he could not achieve satisfactory results by assuming one hypothesis, made trial of (versuchte) another.!O In metaphysics, it is possible to make an analogous trial (auf ahnliche weise Versuchen). This much is the main point of Kant's argument. The name 'Copernicus' is brought in here only to illustrate the propriety of making trial of an untested hypothesis, particularly when extant theories seem fruitless. Any of a number of other scientists could, and in fact do, illustrate this point for Kant. Further parallels between Copernicus and himself are not central to Kant's exposition at this point; which is not to say that Kant never conceived of further, and perhaps more important, parallels. But whether or not this is so surpasses the letter of Kant's own writing, something one would never gather from the commentators quoted earlier. Consider further that in 1759 and in 1760, Kant lectured on mechanics. For this purpose he used Wolff's Elementa Mechanicae,u Appended to this work is a dissertation on scientific method, the 'Commentatio de Studio Matheseos Recte Instituendo'. Kant would have been very familiar with this tract. 12 In sections 309-11 of Wolff's dissertation, there is a discussion of the very point at issue - the uses of novel hypotheses as a means of scientific progress. The example given is the hypothesis of Copernicus together with its subsequent verification by Kepler and Newton. Kant's reference to Copernicus in the Vorrede may thus have been introduced with this passage in mind, and not necessarily as a more comprehensive reference to the effects of 'activating' the observer in astronomy and in epistemology. At least this possibility ought not to be dismissed out-of-hand in favour of the more orthodox exegesis. Note also an allusion which Kant makes (B xxii note) to a further parallel between De Revolutionibus and his own Kritik. There Kant argues that what he is setting out purely hypothetically in the Vorrede will be established 'apodeictically, not hypothetically' in the body of the Kritik. There is a very similar relation between the Preface of Copernicus'

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De Revolutionibus and the body of that treatise itself: where in the Praefatio Authoris the heliocentric principle is asserted only as a hypothesis, in the body of the work its use is taken for granted,13 I have so far been attempting to show (1) that in the main texts of both editions of the first Kritik, Kant never spoke of a 'Copernican Revolution' or even of a 'Copernican Hypothesis'; (2) that Kant was never concerned, even in the Preface to the second edition, to stress the doctrinal similarity between his own epistemological teachings and the astronomical theses of De Revolutionibus; (3) that Kant's main reason for referring to Copernicus in the 1787 Preface concerns his intended contrast between the hypothetical and the established (or demonstrated) stages of a scientific discipline and to point up the periodic need of new departures in science when old theories have lost their vitality; and finally (4) that in the Vorrede (with its elaborate historical parallels, so conspicuously absent in the present case) Kant's reference to Copernicus in B xvii may not stand in any primary relation to the main thrust of his argument. Now that this much has been said, we must take stock. Even if it is clear that Kant nowhere uses the expression 'Copernican Revolution', and that such reference as is made to Copernicus need not be viewed solely by the one interpretation which commentators have supposed, it still remains for us to enquire just what illumination the expression 'The Copernican Revolution' does shed on the main corpus of Kant's metaphysics. For even though they are wrong in suggesting that Kant explicitly made this comparison of his own philosophy with the astronomy of Copernicus, Kantian scholars are correct in assuming that there is a fruitful analogy between these two great works. Kant openly asserts a similarity between himself and Copernicus in but one respect; each of them made trial of an alternative hypothesis when existent theories proved unsatisfactory. The revolutions in thought with which Kant explicitly compares his own revolution have nothing specifically to do with Copernicus. But how are we to understand the last reference to Copernicus, quoted above, in B xxii note? A further analogy between Kant and Copernicus is implied here. It is this which to some extent justifies the tradition according to which commentators speak of 'Kant's Copernican Revolution'. What is implicit in this last reference suggests that the revolutions in mathematics and natural science of which Kant speaks, in expounding his own metaphysics, are not merely revolutions; they are revolutions of a quite special variety. These were not revolutions simply because a fresh hypothesis was substituted for prior theories. They were also a revolution in ways of thinking (Revolution der Denkart). The demonstration that every equilateral triangle is also equiangular must have been carried out initially by some geometer who discovered that it was useless merely to follow with his eyes what

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he saw in the triangle, or even to trace out the elements which are thought in the concept of 'equilateral triangle' by itself. That is, neither empirical observation of equilateral triangles nor an analysis of the concepts involved in speaking of such geometrical entities will serve to demonstrate any mathematical truth. What must be employed is rather what Kant calls 'the construction' of concepts; we must exhibit a priori the intuition corresponding to our concept (B 741). What this hypothetical ancient geometer discovered was that it was necessary to produce the figure of an equilateral triangle by means of what he himself thought into it. He thus exhibited a priori its equiangularity, as is in accordance with the geometrical concepts we now possess. To have had certain a priori knowledge the geometer must have attributed nothing to the equilateral triangle except what followed necessarily from what he injected into it in accordance with his geometrical concept, ie. its equiangularity (B xii). What Kant takes to be essential to this revolution is that the geometer's mind is not concerned just with the empirical object, some particular equilateral triangle; or even with the concept 'equilateral triangle' derived by abstraction from such objects. It is concerned rather with its own act of construction, with what is put into the figure in accordance with the concept. A priori knowledge in mathematics arises from the mind's awareness of its own special operations. Special difficulties arise when Kant tries to give a similar account of the genesis of natural science. Because here the revolution (once again a Revolution der Denkart) is the introduction of the experimental method. What is it to discover the experimental method as Galileo, Torricelli and Stahl are said by Kant to have done? They discovered that reason has insight only into what it produces in itself in accordance with its own plan (B xiii). Here again, a superficial inspection of objects will never give us a binding law of nature. But reason will never be satisfied with anything less than such a law. Reason confronts nature with its own ultimate principles, e.g. those set out in the Analogies, and with the experiment thought out in accordance with these principles. Reason is the judge who compels witnesses to answer questions which he himself formulates. The revolution whereby natural science ceased to be groping was due to the realization (by Bacon, Galileo, Torricelli and Stahl, presumably) that our researches into nature ought to conform to the questions and principles which the scientist's reason itself puts and applies to nature. So much Kant actually claims. The value of all this as a piece of history of science is, of course, extremely dubious. Galileo is struggling every moment for greater and greater objectivity: thus he dispenses with the subjective reactions to heat by inventing a publicly observable thermometer. And he attempts a similar shift of emphasis in the case of time, where he sought an effective pendulum-clock. To characterize the

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essence of such discoveries as Galileo's realization that his researches into nature had to conform to what his own reason put into nature is, to say the least, mildly shocking. Galileo never makes such a claim for himself; in fact, the case is quite the opposite. Similarly with Copernicus. This need not matter, of course; Kant may be telling us something about these great scientists which even they did not know. This is rather unusual as a technique in history of science. None the less, it must be granted that for Kant the revolutions in mathematics and physics had something in common, over and above their being disciplines in which bold new hypotheses took the place of older, unfruitful theories. In each case, the mind was somehow attending to what it itself had put into its objects. This doctrine is only implicit in the Preface to the second edition of Kant's Kritik (1787); it is not openly stated in the words which Kant actually uses. But in view of this doctrine, the special situation of metaphysics itself may now be considered. Mathematics and natural science had become what they were in Kant's day by a tremendously rapid advance, remarkable enough to make Kant reflect upon the essential character of this new way of forming conceptions. Can metaphysics imitate mathematics and physics in this manner? From the structure of the first Kritik, it seems clear that Kant is looking not merely for some sort of metaphysical revolution in the weaker sense, some new hypothesis which will extricate the philosopher from the chaos of previous epistemological theories. He is looking for a revolution which has the same fundamental character as that which he had implicitly outlined for mathematics and natural science. Before Kant, metaphysics had proceeded on the assumption that all knowledge must conform to objects (sich nach den Gegenstanden richten). But on this assumption all attempts to acquire a priori knowledge of objects (so necessary if physics and mathematics are to stand on what Kant felt to be a firm foundation), all such attempts must end in failure. Kant therefore suggests that we at least try (versuche) the hypothesis that objects must somehow conform to the structure of our knowledge. The proposed revolution in metaphysics therefore is to follow the line suggested by the revolutions in the methods of mathematics and physics. Not only will a new hypothesis be put to trial in place of the older enervated theories, but now we may consider that perhaps the mind, in all these cases, 'puts something into' its objects, imposes certain properties upon them necessarily. Here (B xvi) appears the first reference to Copernicus. He too swept aside older theories and tried a relatively new hypothesis. This Kant makes quite explicit. But submerged and implicit in this example may also be the obvious point that Copernicus sought to account for the properties of observed celestial phenomena by investing the observer with a certain activity,14 Kant thinks the metaphysician can make an

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analogous experiment: 'In der Metaphysik kann man nun. . . es aus ahnliche Weise versuchen' (B xvi). Kant's thought is something like this: in explaining the movements of celestial bodies Copernicus rejected the natural assumption that the movement was in the stars themselves; he tried instead the view that this movement was in the spectator. The movement is 'put into' the stars by the spectator. That is the way Kant construes the Copernican Hypothesis, and his own philosophical parallel to it is definite, and important. But, and this is the real issue here, not all of the parallel is explicit in Kant's work. That Copernicus tried a new hypothesis in place of older theories is explicit in B xv-B xxii. But that Copernicus (like Kant) had hit on a hypothesis whose main point was to take what had been regarded as characteristics of the observed object and explained these in terms of the characteristics of the observer himself - this interpretation of Copernicus is not at all explicit in Kant's own exposition, Professors Paton and Kemp Smith notwithstanding. So Kant was urging that, like Copernicus, metaphysicians must make trial of a new hypothesis. Moreover, the new hypothesis is to be of a quite definite kind. In the light of all this, it appears that while we are justified in following the tradition of Kantian scholarship in saying that the Konigsberger effected a Copernican Revolution in metaphysics, we must, in the interests of scholarship, distinguish the explicit from the implicit features of Kant's own claim. We must certainly refuse to allow commentators to obliterate the distinction between what Kant said and what he 'must have meant' in their zeal to establish the latter. And, in fact, Kant's understanding of what Copernicus actually did can only be ascertained by comparing the texts of the De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium and the Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

Notes 1. Copernicus, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, Libri VI (Basel, 1566): Praefatio Authoris; from 'ac propemodum contra communem sensum' to 'illorum phaenomena indesequantur'. 2. Thus H. J. Paton writes: 'Kant compares his own philosophical revolution with that initiated by Copernicus.' Kant's Metaphysic of Experience (New York, 1936), vol. I, p. 75 (my italics). A. C. Ewing says: 'But Kant means that he resembles Copernicus in attributing to ourselves, and so classing as appearance, what his predecessors had attributed to reality.' A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd end (London, 1950), p. 16 (my italics). 3. 'it is this doctrine and this doctrine alone', says N. Kemp Smith, 'A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason' (London, 1918).

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4. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London, 1950), p. 22. 5. Hibbert Journal (1910) (my italics). 6. Kant (London, 1936), pp. 50-1. 7. C. J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant (New York, 1949), xxvii. 8. R. Eisler, Kant-lexikon (Berlin, 1930). 9. Kemp Smith's translation, p. 19. 10. See Copernicus' own words at the head of this essay, and compare B xvi quoted above. 11. Part of the Elementa Matheseos Universae (Geneva, 1746). 12. See Erich Adickes, Kant als Naturforscher (Berlin, 1924-5), vol. I, p. lIn. 13. 'what I am saying may seem obscure here; nevertheless it will become clearer in the proper place'. Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Dedication to Pope Paul III (my translation). In Copernicus' magnum opus we must, of course, distinguish the Dedication to Pope Paul III from the very first Foreword to the reader. The latter was almost certainly the mischievous work of Andreas Osiander, as is made clear beyond doubt in Gassendi's Life of Copernicus appended to his Tychonis Brahei (Paris, 1654). The Dedication, however, is indisputably by Copernicus himself; these were facts definitely established only in 1873, but hinted at in the mid-seventeenth century. Professor Kemp Smith mistakenly refers to the Osiander portion in the name of Copernicus, in order to show how the latter regarded his 'hypothesis'. The hypothesis-talk was Osiander's invention, calculated to save De Revolutionibus from an early Papal death. Copernicus' claims were really much stronger. 14. This also seems suspicious as a piece of history of science. De Revolutionibus . .. seeks primarily to show that, as a matter of physical geometry, all the data which gave rise to the astronomical computing system set out in Ptolemy's Almagest can equally well be accounted for (i.e. explained and predicted) by shifting the primary reference point of the ancient system from the Earth to the Sun. The geometry which resulted would be much tighter and more elegant, the introduction of ad hoc (i.e. unsystematic) hypotheses would be minimized, and one's physical imagination would be less offended. But Copernicus was essentially a medieval astronomer. He thought he was working within the old framework of ideas more effectively by making certain formal and systematic alterations. Almost certainly he was not aware of the full implications of his geometrico-physical modification. And Copernicus never expresses himself as I suspect Kant would have liked him to do, by stressing that his hypothesis consisted in 'investing the observer with a certain activity'.

3 Knowledge and Experience: An Examination of the Four Reflective 'Perspectives' in Kant's Critical Philosophy Stephen Palmquist

I The fundamental distinction

Kant's Critical philosophy is notorious for its terminological ambiguity and apparent inconsistency. The interpretative confusion that often results is at least a contributing factor to the conclusion of many commentators, such as Strawson, that large chunks of Kant's System (e.g. his transcendental idealism) are 'unintelligible' and 'incoherent'. 1 Yet I believe, with Kant, that if his works are approached with 'the patience and impartiality of a judge' (and perhaps even with 'the benevolent assistance of a fel!ow-worker'),2 rather than with a set of analytical tools with which to dissect his every sentence, then almost all of his theories can be understood in surprisingly simple and consistent terms. Accordingly, I shall take an initial step in this essay towards the substantiation of this supposition by interpreting and interrelating some of the fundamental , distinctions which serve to structure all three Critiques. The root distinction underlying directly or indirectly all others in Kant's Critical philosophy is that between 'knowledge' (Erkenntnis) and 'experience' (Erfahrung). Yet unfortunately, in spite of (or perhaps, because of) its ubiquity in Kant's writings, it tends to remain an obscure and uncriticized presupposition for both Kant and his many interpreters and critics. The main reason for this neglect seems to be that he invokes a variety of distinctions which define knowledge and experience more precisely, with the result that the more common terms naturally appear to be less technical and in no need of special treatment. The purpose of this essay will be to explicate the knowledge-experience distinction which is implicit in Kant's System by integrating it with the most important of these more obviously technical distinctions: first with his pure-empirical and subject-object distinctions, second with his a priori-a posteriori and

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analytic-synthetic distinctions, and third with his distinctions between empirical, transcendental, logical and practical reflection. . . An important limitation must be placed on the scop.e of thIS essa~ If its task is to be made practicable: I will be unable to gIVe an exhaustIVe account of anyone term or distinction. Consequently, the. ~etails of th.e arguments of Kant and his critics for and against the legItImacy of hIS usage will have to be largely neglected. I regard this as a ~ecessary limitation because - especially in light of Kant's own emphasIs on the 'architectonic unity' of his System - 3an interpreter can judge the extent of an argument's validity fairly only after they have an adequate understanding of the overall context into which it fits. Although t~is does not mean that carelessly general or even incorrect statements wIll be excusable it does mean that I will have to ignore or only briefly mention som~ minor ambiguitjes, and that the many meticulous studies which have been made on most of the relevant distinctions will be of less use than if I were focusing my attention more narrowly. But this limitation certainly has its advantages. For all too frequently, as Wolff points out, 'the literature on Kant has somewhat the air of a multitude of reports from the blind wise men who encountered the elephant. Each one tells of the p~rt on whic~ his hands happened. to fall,. b~t. a ,~ar~fu.l .reader might fall to recogmze the beast from theIr descnptlOns. LlIl~ltm.g the discussion to general considerations will not only decrease the hkehhoo? of falling into this predicament here, but should also increase t~e POSSIbility of providing a 'map' of the general contour of Kant's P?llosophy, the use of which can help us to avoid such one-sidedness when mvestJgating more specific aspects of his System in the future. The wide range of connotations which the terms 'knowledge' and 'experience' have in ordinary language might induce an. inte~pr~ter to regard any secondary distinctions with suspicion. They mIght mSlst th~t these distinctions must inevitably share the indistinct nature of the pnmary distinction from which they are derived, notwithstanding any intell~­ gibility they seem to have on their own. Such a proposal, however, IS unsound; for, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, Kant's own explanat~ons of his terms can be interpreted in a relatively clear and plausible fashIOn. Moreover, even though he does not say much about knowledg~ and experience as such, he does say enough to supply us with a suffiCIently coherent starting point. In ordinary use, 'experience' can refer generally to a subject's immediate encounter with an object. This 'immediate experience' is independent of the functions Kant calls 'determinant judgement' and 'reflective judgement', for in such experience the subject has neither det~rmi~ed the given object to be an object of knowledge nor reflected upon ItS epIstemological status. 5 Kant uses the word in this way when, for example, he begins the Introduction to the first Critique with the proclamation: 'There

Critical Assessments 47

can be no doubt that all our knowledge beings with experience.' Several

sente~ces la~er he adds that, although 'all our knowledge begins with

~xpenence, It does not follow that it all arises out of experience'. That IS, all kn~wledge must be part of someone's immediate experience in orde.r ~~r It actually.to be known at all;6 yet this does not preclude the possIbIlIty that certam aspects of our knowledge might be derived from some other source. In any case, Kant uses the word 'experience' in this ordinary, indeterminate and non-reflective sense throughout his Critical works. But in explaining how some knowledge is grounded in a source other than immediate experience, Kant develops another, less typical, meaning for 'experience'. He describes this more determinate type of experience as a concrete 'synthesis of perceptions'7 in which various 'objects of possible ~xperience'8 ar~ made actual objects of knowledge through the ~o-op.eratlOn ?f. ~he sub~ect's two main powers of cognitive judgement: mtult~ve sen~lbJllty (whIch produces sensation) and conceptual understandmg (which produces thought).9 This process, known also as determinant judgement, implies a differentiation between two kinds of knowledg~:l0 the validity. of 'empir.ical' knowledge is determinable only be appealm~ at som~ pomt t? sensIble experience,l1 while that of 'pure' knowledg~ IS determmable WIthout reference to sensibility, tei the extent that 'there is nothing that belongs to sensation' in it,12 Kant claims that empirical knowledge is tied so closely to experience that the two can, for us, be equated: 'Empirical knowledge is experience.'13 In this new sense. (deve.loped fully only in the second edition of the' first Critique), expenence IS no longer the immediate chronological starting point of all knowledge, but one of several 'species of knowledge' .14 Unlike empirical knowledge, pure knowledge is related only indirectly to experience: it arises out of the subject's abstract reflection on the general nature of his experience,,15) and is pure in virtue of its primary dependence on the subject rather than the object of knowledge. 16 But in order to engage in ~uc~ refle~tion, we must be consciously aware of our experience, not in ~ts Imme~late state, but as empirical knowledge; for experience in itself IS 'the ultImate unconditional given, within which all reflection arises' Y So far: Kant's use of the words 'knowledge' and 'experi,ence' seems to be relatively clear. The latter refers either to the original encounter between subject and object (i.e. 'immediate experience') which yields actual kno~led~e t.hrough determinant judgement, or to the 'empirical knowledge whIch IS so produced; and the former refers either to this same empirical knowledge, or to the knowledge which can be inferred from experience by reflecting in other, more abstract ways. But this acco~n~ of hi~ primary distinction will be of no use to the interpreter o?l~ If ~t proVIdes an adequate context for interpreting Kant's secondary dlstmctJons. In §II, therefore, I will introduce the four classes of knowl-

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edge which arise out of two of his secondary distinctions, after which I will examine in §III the types of reflection which lead to such knowledge. Finally, in §IV I will integrate the various results of this enquiry into a single picture, delineating the essential perspectival pattern which determines the form of Kant's Critical System. /

II Two secondary distinctions The knowledge-experience distinction is rarely discussed as such by either Kant or his commentators because, as mentioned above, experience (even though it has chronological priority in its immediate form) is defined in terms of knowledge. Despite the negligible attention it has been given, however, this distinction will turn 5lut to form the context in which all Kant's other distinctions are set. But before this can be fully demonstrated, a good deal more will have to be said about the 'knowledge' side of the distinction. In this section, therefore, I will specify how four basic types of knowledge arise out of the two most prevalent .of Kant's secondary distinctions, the a priori-a posteriori and the analyt1csynthetic, both of which are concerned not only with knowledge, but with the various ways reflective knowledge and immediate experience are related. On the surface, the bifurcation of knowledge into a priori and a posteriori types seems to be readily comprehensible. A posteriori k?ow~­ edge is knowledge derived directly from - or the truth of Wh1Ch 1S contingent upon - the meeting of subject and object in experience. A priori knowledge, on the other hand, is 'given' or 'innate' knowledge which is derived from a source - or the truth of which is - 'absolutely independent of all experience';18 hence it is both necessary19 and universa1.20 But upon closer investigation, two problems arise: first, how does this distinction differ from that between pure and empirical knowledge? and second, if 'all our knowledge begins with experience', then what sense is there in saying that a priori knowledge is somehow 'independent of all experience:? I will consider these questions in the following two paragraphs. ' Although Kant ordinarily uses the terms 'pure' and 'a priori', as well as the terms 'empirical' and 'a posteriori', interchangeably, they should not be regarded as mere synonyms,21 for he does occasionally stress a technical distinction between them. The pure-empirical distinction discriminates between knowledge which does (empirical) and does not (pure) depend directly on sensation, whereas th.e a. priori-a pos~eriori distinction discriminates between knowledge Wh1Ch 18 grounded m the subject's experience of an object (a posteriori) and that whi~h th.e s~bject brings to experience, which must therefore be grounded pnmanly m the

'I

i

49

subject itself (a priori). Presumably, knowledge could be a priori even though its expression might utilize terms which appeal to sensation;22 or it could be a posteriori even though its expression might utilize only terms which are pure. But such usage is of minimal importance, since the two pairs are almost always treated coextensively: empirical a posteriori knowledge is knowledge derivable from a subject's experience of an object (a posteriori) and requiring sensation (empirical), while pure a priori knowledge is knowledge brought to experience by the subject (a priori) and requiring no sensation (pure). 23 The status of a priori knowledge in relation to experience should become more evident when I relate the distinctions of this section to the various forms of reflection in §III. But for now several remarks ~an be added which should dispel some of the ambiguity shrouding the meaning of the word 'knowledge' in the phrase 'a priori knowledge'.24 Knowledge which arises a posteriori seems not to be troublesome because it is by definition based on experience. A priori knowledge, by contrast, 'which I must presuppose as being in me prior to objects being given to me',25 and which is therefore objectively valid 'antecedently to all experience' ,26 is rather more ambiguously called 'knowledge'. This ambiguity can be cleared up by recalling the distinction made in §I between immediate experience (which can lead to 'empirical knowledge') and reflective knowledge (which is known only if experienced, but which might be traceable to some other source). When this is stressed, both a post€riori and a priori knowledge can be regarded as abstractions from immediate experience - though, as will become evident in §III, they abstract in different directions. As such, they do not denote knowledge which is actually known apart from experience; rather, such titles refer to types of knowledge whose validity rests on more than just a subject's encounter with particular objects in e:cperience. Kant could have made his meaning less confusing either by not calling the determinate form of experience 'empirical knowledge', or by not using the word 'knowledge' for that which arises out of one's reflection on experience. Using the same word for both gives rise to uncertainty on the part of the reader as to which sense of the word 'knowledge' he intends when he uses the word without a qualifying adjectiveY Fortunately, once the choices are explicated, the context usually makes his intention sufficiently clear. . Kant also has a more general use for the a priori-a posteriori distinction which should be mentioned briefly at this point. Sometimes when he speaks loosely Kant equates all philosophical or 'metaphysical' knowledge with the a priori and all ordinary or 'physical' knowledge with the a posteriori. 28 Thus he says 'knowledge through reasOn and a priori knowledge are the same thing'. 29 (Elsewhere he treats the term 'transcende~tal' i.n a similarly loose way.30) Wolff rightly criticizes Kant's tendency to 1dentlfy 'the formal (space, time, categories) with the a priori and the

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material (sensation, empirical concepts) with the a posteriori';31 but he goes too far when he adds that this causes Kant to 'be irresistibly drawn to assimilate all knowledge to a priori knowledge'. For Kant's loose usage of these terms is never more than a tendency: as we shall see, he .ordinarily is very careful to limit the a priori to certain specific sorts of philosophical knowledge. Moreover, this broad use of terms is itself quite -legitimate so long as it is intended only to refer to the place of Kant's three Critiques within the overall body of his Critical writings. Nevertheless, it is still a mistake to believe that in Kant's strict usage the a priori-a posteriori distinction .can be equated, as Paton suggests, with - the formal-~a~riall distinction. 3~ Since such loose use of technical terms is likely to lead to misunderstanding and equivocation, any interpreter should avoid it wherever possible. Instead of referring to the Critical philosopher as a 'transcendental philosopher', as Kant himself does,33 and assuming all his philosophical concerns to be limited to the a priori - both of which are legitimate only when speaking in very general terms - I shall henceforth treat 'a priori' and 'transcendental' in their strict , sensesr, gnd attempt to differentiate more precisely the various sorts of knowledge with which he is concerned. , The other \important secdndary distinction Kant makes between types of (reflective) knowledge is that between 'analytic' and 'synthetio' judgements. 34 Unfortunately, he describes this contrast in ~ wide variety of ways, which are difficult if not impossible to integrate into a single, consistent picture. Newton Garver, for instance, finds no less then 'twelve theories of analyticity contained in or suggested by Kant's discussion'p5 Moreoever, perhaps as a result of such variety, the nature and validity of this distinction have been a matter of considerable debate in recent years. Obviously, it would be inappropriate for me to embark on a detailed examination of this particular subject in a general discussion of this sort. Nevertheless, examining a selection of the most significant comments of both Kant and his critics will help differentiate Kant's version of the distinction from some of the un-Kantian versions which have recently been suggested. Probably the best known of Kant's descriptions of these terms is that in an analytic judgement the predicate is already 'contained in' the subject, while in a synthetic judgement the predicate 'lies outside' the subject. 36 A more illuminating, yet less frequently discussed, way Kant describes this distinction is to say that judgements can be determined to be analytic only by applying the laws of logic to the previously determined meanings of their terms, while judgements can be determined to be synthetic only 'under the condition that an intuition underlies the concept of their subject'. 37 As Allison says: 'Synthetic judgements assert [real] relations [of concepts'to objects], while analytic judgements merely a~~rt logical relations between concepts. '38 With these descriptions in ;.t\,,'

/

Analytic judgements

Synthetic judgements

Fig. 1

/

mind, we can use Kant's own pictorial representation of 'particular judgements' (according to which the subject is depicted as a square and the predicate as a cirde),39 to show how (e.g.) 'Yellow is a colour' and 'This table is yellow' are propositional representations of analytic and synthetic judgements, respectively (see fig. 1). ' Beck translates Kant's distinction into less metaphorical terms: if ' "X is A" implies logically "X is B", the judgement is analytic', but if B lis 'related to A by virtue of the fact that both are predicates of the same X', then"it is synthetic. 40 Synthetic propositions, then, are informative: they provide information about the subject which is not necessarily implied by the meanings of the words (e.g. this table would still be a table whatever the colour). Analytic propositions, on the other hand, are, strictly speaking, not informative: 41 the predicate provides only what can be inferred from the subject by means of the laws of logic. 42 Although this description of Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction is given predQminantly in terms of single, subject-predicate propositions, it is unfair to charge Kant with limiting his logic to such propositions. On the contrary, says Wolff, 'nothing could be further from the truth' .43 The great variety of applications Kant gives for his analytic-synthetic distinction 44 is evidence enough of his awareness of the complexity of propositional logic. Subject-predicate examples simply provide a manageable way of grasping the general characteristics of this distinction. Kant leaves no doubt as to how all this applies to empirical knowledge: 'Judgments of experience, as such, are one and all synthetic. '45 Only when we attempt to interpret such determinate judgements by reflectillg upon them does some knowledge come to be regarded as analytic. The bulk of the discussion of analytic-synthetic distinction by recent philosophers has suffered needlessly by neglecting the implications of this salient qualification. The result has been a running debate over whether the terms refer to a difference of kind or merely to one of degree. 46 The position Kant would adopt on this point becomes evident once his admittedly subtle distinction between immediate e~Berie~,p~; ~ ,ltt'· ,.) How, then, we might ask, is a demand for schemata, which are nothing but limiting rules for application, possible? To understand how this could be, we need to determine the unique sense in which the schematism question is appropriate for pure concepts. lO That is, by emphasizing that the central task of the understanding in knowledge is the subject's connection according to rules, synthesis, Kant always immediately raises the problem of objectivity, of how we are justified in thinking together cognitive connections. If the Copernican Revolution is to work, and if we are to legislate to nature in a way that allows for knowledge (contra Hume's psychological legislation), then we must always be prepared to show that the synthetic connections effected by the subject are objective. Thus, transcendental logic is committed to demonstrating the possibility of application, since the application of the categories in determining various unities in experience justifies their objectivity. We are, then, asking in our schematism question, not for rules which will tell us whether this or that is a causal connection (a decision which always requires that mysterious faculty or judgement), but for the rules which specify the conditions under which this could ever be a question (or, how, the terms in which, this is a legitimate question to pose empirically). We know already, in a general way from the Deduction, that the broad schematism for pure concepts is the 'possibility of experience'; this chapter, for the sake of possible transcendental judgements, makes clearer how that principle 'works'. As just indicated, judgement is still required in any empirical investigation, but now we

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must show how that empirical judgement could be possible; in what way the categories set the limits within which an empirical judgement can come into play. Since the task for a transcendental schematism is to explain how there can be a universal determination of objects in general, such a schema must be a universal feature of all appearances, and must also be 'purely' universal, not some mere empirical predicate. His solution, which cannot be fully examined here, is the pure form of all intuition - time. This schema will explain the terms in which the categories can apply to appearances because it is both a necessary component of all sensible appearances, and yet is a purely formal feature of those appearances, and is thus conceivable as the a priori method of categorial application. The categories are objective only as 'affecting' inner sense, and since the form of inner sense is time, they are only 'modes of time consciousness'. We find here that what it means for objectivity to be a mediation of 'apperception' and 'inner sense' is for subjective temporal appearances to be thought objectively by means of the understanding's synthetic activity. It is because the manifold, in order to be a manifold for us at all, must immediately conform to the subject's form of intuition that it can be thought by the subject. As Kant emphasizes throughout, it is because there is no immediacy, because immediacy is always already mediated, that knowledge is possible. In this case (A 138/B 177-A 1401 B 179), it is because the manifold is not a pure 'other', because it immediately conforms to a subjective condition, that there can be a transcendental judgement based on purely subjective conditions,u Kant makes clearer this 'schematic' explanation of a concept's objectivity by contrasting it with an 'image' as such an explanation. The difference at first seems straightforward enough. A schema is a 'Produkt der Einbildungskraft', but is not, for that reason, a 'Bild'. The most significant reason it isn't is that a schema has no 'einzelne Anaschauung' as its 'Absicht', but does aim at 'die Einheit in der Bestimmung der Sinnlichkeit'. A schema is a Methode, not, as an image must be, a particular representation. This is all in keeping with Kant's interpretation of 'formality'. If concepts are rules, or functions, then any discussion of their sense, significance or application can occur only in terms of the method of using them. (Thus, to say that the categories have only a 'sensible meaning' is not to say that they have only sensible instances; they don't have instances at all, but can only be applied to a sensible manifold.) It makes no sense to speak of some causal connection as an 'image' of a causal rule; it is rather known as a result of the application of the causal rule. Thus, the question of objectivity is a question of our judgemental use of the rule. That is, for pure concepts, the imagination specifies schemata in order to explain their objectivity, not images. In sum, we have three terms related to one another: (a) concept - a rule

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for synthetic unity; (b) schema - a method projected by the imagination for specifying the conditions under which the rule can be used; and (c) image - an individual content, resulting from the use of the rule, as specified by the schemata. Thus, we can describe the fully unique sense in which a schematism question is appropriate to pure concepts. Such schemata do not provide rules which help us in deciding which series in a manifold is causally connected and which not. That question, for Kant, is always an empirical one, since there is never any possibility for determining an individual content as simply 'causal', or a 'substance', or a 'unity', etc. (Pure concepts have no images.) We shall see in a moment how Kant might approach that empirical question. The task for a transcendental schematism is rather that of determining the relation between pure concepts and 'objects in general', or experience as a whole. In other words, the determination of the manifold by the categories is a priori. All experience always already stands in some causal relation with some other. The category and its schema only prove that, and how, such could be the case. If we then want to distinguish in concreto objective from subjective succession, we must determine whether some empirical rule applies. The category of causality, as proven objective in the Deduction, thus warrants the empirical search for causal connection, and the schema for that category demonstrates how that category could warrant that enquiry. The concept is objective (the Deduction) as an a priori mode of time consciousness (the Schematism). Thus, these rules for rules specify the way in which objects in general can be thought of as determined by pure concepts. But, if this is so, how are they so determined in particular? If transcendental schemata demonstrate how the determination demanded by the Deduction can be effected, how is it effected in empirical instances? If I know that there must be causal connection (and not mere habitual associations), and I know the terms of that connection (objective succession), how do I determine when an empirical rule of causation does apply? In short, what is the relation between an empirical concept and its schema?

II Empirical concepts and application rules Kant is not very helpful in answering this question, as the various, conflicting interpretations of that relation evidence. Indeed, he seems to vacillate between contradictory extremes, all the way from claiming that concept and object in the empirical sciences are so homogeneous as to require no discussion of applicability (A 138/B 177), to claiming that concrete instances are so heterogeneous with their concepts as always to

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require schemata in order for there to be correct application (A 1411B 180). His first statement on this schema-concept relation is problematic for a number of reasons. In allen anderen Wissenschaften, wo die Begriffe, durch die der Gegenstand allgemein gedacht wird, von denen, die diesen in concreto vorstellen, wie er gegeben wird, night so unterschieden und heterogen sind, ist es unn6tig, wegen der Anwendung des ersteren auf den letzten Er6rterung zu geben. (A 138/B 177; my italics) In other words, categories are a priori; we begin by insisting that they have originally nothing to do with the empirical, and so, to justify a claim of applicability to the manifold, a schematism is called for. Empirical concepts, on the other hand, are derived, a posteriori. Consequently, their 'application' to that from which they arose would seem much less problematic. There simply doesn't seem to be a problem with regard to what empirical concepts apply to; any answer other than the empirical manifold just wouldn't make sense. But it is hard to see how Kant's account can end here, and even harder to understand what this apparent exclusion of a 'third' for empirical concept and instance does, in fact, mean. Consider the 'von denen' italicized in the above quotation. A loose translation of the first few phrases might read, 'In all other sciences, where the concepts, through which the object is thought universally, are not so different and heterogeneous from those which represent this (object) in concreto, as it is given, etc.' Obviously, the difficulty is what Kant might be referring to by the pronoun denen. Does he mean, as he certainly seems to, concepts which represent the individual in concreto? If so, then there is certainly no problem of heterogeneity between concept and instance (since they are both concepts), but it is extremely difficult to imagine what one of these 'individual concepts' might look like. It seems a contradiction in terms to say that a concept can represent in concreto, although it certainly can be used in concreto. I believe that what Kant must have in mind here are what he calls 'images', but for now we can postpone a discussion of what the 'two terms' are in this claim for homogeneity. But further, that Gleichartigkeit itself is not as obvious as Kant seems to think it is. For one thing, the contrast between a concept taken allgemein and one used in concreto suggests a heterogeneity strong enough to raise classical Aristotelian problems of 'schemata'; how knowledge always of universals can be adequate to beings always in particular (i.e. the relation between a X(d}6~ov and the ,.60E n). Also, from the

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fact that empirical concepts have their ongm in experience, it does not then necessarily follow that these universals have an unproblematic application to the manifold. For this to be strictly true, empirically conditioned universals would have to be nothing but strung-along memories of numerous similar individuals. This position, of course, is not only not Kant's (empirical concepts as rules are necessary for there to be individuals), but it doesn't make much sense unless we can describe that similar in many instances by virtue of which the concept can be applied. In short, while the origin of these universals may be empirical, their status as universals, and thus the question of their judgemental application, is still problematic. So, our list of problems grows. There is now some obscurity surrounding: (a) what Kant might mean by an individual content, or even an 'individual concept' (i.e. what the 'von denen' refers to); (b) why he seems to think that there is no serious heterogeneity between allgemein and in concreto; and (c) since empirical concepts have no direct intuition corresponding to them, as is the case with pure concepts, why they too do not need a schematism, at least in the 'how is judgement possible?' sense. Kant begins to answer these questions in the seventh paragraph of the schematism chapter, where he claims, 'In der Tat, liegen unsern reinen sinnlichen Begriffen nicht Bilder der Gegenstande, sondern Schemate zum Grunde' (A 140-1/B 180). He will quickly, and given what he had said earlier, paradoxically, extend this claim to empirical concepts as well (A 141/B 180), claiming that there is even less ground in this latter case for the sense of a concept ever being given by an 'image' of it. Images are always individual; they are in fact what it means to speak of concepts in concreto, and hence they can never explain the concept itself and its method of application, all pointing to the need for empirical schemata. Now, with this explanation, the above three problems seem less confusing, as Kant apparently moves in the opposite direction from his earlier claim. Now, 'images' only result from the application of the conceptrule, and thus can only be interpreted as concepts used in concreto, rather than as individual concepts; and the lack of a homogeneity between the universality of a concept and its individual use does demand some doctrine of a schematism. This account also coincides with my general view of the Schematism chapter. I claimed that it was an attempt to explain a concept by what I called standing Hume on his head; not 'reducing' it to the non-conceptual, but showing how it is meaningful in the way it conditions the intelligibility of the non-conceptual order. Such a procedure is obvious here even with respect to empirical concepts. Kant refuses to reduce either mathematical or empirical concepts to their 'images' (roughly, to 'sense-impressions' of them), their particular manifestations. Hume is wrong here as well as on the transcendental level;

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concepts are meaningful not by virtue of their images, but by their schemata, their rules of application. But this explanation is leading us into some rather 'grey' areas, to say the least. For, we now reach the central question of this essay: can Kant describe this now required 'schematization' of empirical concepts? We need to quote at length here from one of his frustratingly rare examples of an empirical concept and its schema. Der Begriff vom Hunde bedeutet eine Regel, nach welcher meine Einbildungskraft die Gestalt eines vierftiBigen Tieres allgemein verzeichnen kann, ohne auf irgend eine einzige besondere Gestalt, die mir die Erfahrung darbietet, oder auch ein jedes mogliche Bild, was ich in concreto darstellen kann, eingeschrankt zu sein. (A 1411B 180) Kant goes on to call this delineation of a Gestalt the concept's 'schema'. This rather opaque claim immediately suggests two problems, though: first, how Kant thinks he has adequately distinguished an empirical concept from its schema, and second, what the status is of this strange new term as a definition of a schema, a Gestalt. Apparently, we have a concept, 'dog'; then, as a result of the work of the imagination, some delineation 'in general'12 of the figure of a fourfooted animal; and, finally, an image of an individual dog, always in concreto. The first difficulty raised is whether there is any real difference between the first two terms, whether Kant can distinguish concept and schema, and what he conceives is the significance of this question. In other words, the rule which specifies the synthetic unity that makes up 'dog', being a four-footed animal, having certain other properties is the concept, 'dog'. The imagination cannot provide a Gestalt for these qualities in a synthetic whole, unless already determined to do so, in a specific way, by the concept-rule. The delineation of a four-footed animal, a delineation that somehow occurs 'universally', is the concept 'dog', not a schematic representation of it. We recall from the first edition Deduction's definition that a concept is the 'consciousness of a synthesis'; obviously, in order for the concept to have any determinateness sufficient to distinguish it from any other concept, it must already possess a unified synthetic connectedness before any question of schematic employment is raised. But, of course, commentators as diverse in their orientations as Heidemann and Wolff have noticed that Kant has an extremely difficult time distinguishing an empirical concept from its schema. What they fail to discuss, however, is how necessary Kant thinks the distinction is, and what happens if there is no distinction. As Kant himself insists,

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das Schema sinnlicher Begriffe . . . ein Produkt und gleichsam ein Monogram der reinen Einbildungskraft a priori, wodurch und wonach die Bilder altererst moglich werden, die aber mit dem Begriffe nur immer vermittelst des Schema, welches sie bezeichnen, verknupft werden mussen. (A 142/B181; my italics) Images only become possible by means of schemata, and it is only by means of schemata that images, 'individual contents', can be connected with empirical concepts. Further, from what I have said above about the nature of concepts, we can see that collapsing this distinction between rules and the specification of their application leads to either of two unacceptable results. On the one hand, we know that a concept is a rule for synthetic connection. Yet, an individual dog, say, is not an image of a rule, not a representation of a synthesis, but a representation that results from a synthesis, and is thus of a different order with respect to its determinate unity. If the concept is not different from its schema, then it is impossible to explain the relation between a rule, and the conditions under which the rule can be correctly employed. Kant is quite correct in claiming that we cannot explain the relation between a rule and an image, between a concept and its 'application instances', without a schema. Otherwise we would have an unsolvable XWQLO"J-lO