[I] was then making plans for a work that might perhaps have the title, “The Limits of Sense and Reason.” I planned to have it consist of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. The first part would have two sections, (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics, but this only with regard to its method. (Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772 [C 10: 129])
Previous Installments:
#1: Introduction to The Limits of Sense and Reason
#3: Aiii/Biii/GW93-97 The Dedication
#4: Avii-ix/GW99 Preface to the First (A) Edition.
#5: Axi note/GW100-101 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#6: Axi note/GW100-101 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#7: Axii-xiv/GW101-102 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#8: Axv-xvi/GW102-103 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#9: Axvi-xvii/GW103 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#10: Axvii-xx/GW103-104 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#11: Axxi-xxii/GW104-105 Preface to the First (A) Edition
#12: Bviii-ix/GW106-107 Preface to the Second (B) Edition
#13: Bix-x/GW107 Preface to the Second (B) Edition
#14: Bx-xii/GW107-108 Preface to the Second (B) Edition
#15: Bxii-xiv/GW108-109 Preface to the Second (B) Edition
#16: Bxiv-xv/GW109-110 Preface to the Second (B) Edition
#17: Bxv-xxii/GW109-113 Preface to the Second (B) Edition, Part I
#18: Bxv-xxii/GW109-113 Preface to the Second (B) Edition, Part II
#19: Bxv-xxii/GW109-113 Preface to the Second (B) Edition, Part III
#20: Bxxii-xxiv/GW113-114 Preface to the Second (B) Edition
#21: Bxxiv-xxv/GW114-115 Preface to the Second (B) Edition
Because LSR is an ongoing and indeed infinite task, yearly installments of the book will be published in the online journal Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy (CSKP).
Correspondingly, LSR, Part 1 has been published in CSKP 6 (2021): 11-109, and can be read, downloaded, or shared in .pdf HERE.
Moreover, a bibliography of Kant’s writings listed by English translations of their titles, alongside the abbreviations used for infratextual references in LSR, has been also been published in CSKP 6 (2021): 1-10, and can be read, downloaded, or shared in .pdf HERE.
CPR TEXT Bxxv-xxxi/GW115-117 Preface to the Second (B) Edition
In the analytical part of the critique it is proved that space and time are only forms of sensible intuition, and therefore only conditions of the existence of the things as appearances, further that we have no concepts of the understanding and hence no elements for the cognition of things except insofar as an intuition can be Bxxxvi given corresponding to these concepts, consequently that we can have cognition of no object as a thing in itself, but only insofar as it is an objectb of sensible intuition, i.e. as an appearance; from which follows the limitation of all even possible speculative cognition of reason to mere objects of experience. Yet the reservation must also be well noted, that even if we cannot cognize these same objects as things in themselves, we at least must be able to think them as things in themselves.* For otherwise there would follow the absurd proposition that there is an appearance without anything that appears. Now if we were to assume that Bxxvii the distinction between things as objects of experience and the very same things as things in themselves, which our critique has made necessary, were not made at all, then the principle of causality, and hence the mechanism of nature in determining causality, would be valid of all things in general as efficient causes. I would not be able to say of one and the same thing, e.g., the human soul, that its will is free and yet that it is simultaneously subject to natural necessity, i.e., that it is not free, without falling into an obvious contradiction; because in both propositions I would have taken the soul in just the same meaning,c namely as a thing in general (as a thingd in itself), and without prior critique, I
* To cognize an object, it is required that I be able to prove its possibility Bxxvi (whether by the testimony of experience from its actuality or a priori through reason). But I can think whatever I like, as long as I do not contradict myself, i.e., as long as my concept is a possible thought, even if I cannot give any assurance whether or not there is a corresponding objecte somewhere within the sum total of all possibilities. But in order to ascribe objective validity to such a concept (real possibility, for the first sort of possibility was merely logical) something more is required. This “more,” however, need not be sought in theoretical sources of cognition; it may also lie in practical ones.
b Object
c “meaning” will translate this word for the remainder of this paragraph.
d Sache
e Object
could not have taken it otherwise. But if the critique not erred in teaching that the objecta should be taken in a twofold meaning, namely as appearance or as thing in itself; if its deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding is correct, and hence the principle of causality applies only to things taken in the first sense, namely insofar as are objects experience, while things in second meaning are not subject to it; then just same is thought of in the appear- Bxxviii -ance (in visible actions) as necessarily subject to the law of nature and to this extent not free, while yet on the other hand it is thought of as belonging to a thing in itself as not subject to that law, and hence free, without any contradiction hereby occurring. Now although I cannot cognize my soul, considered from the latter side, through any speculative reason (still less through empirical observation), and hence I cannot cognize freedom as a property of any being to which I ascribe effects in the world of sense, because then I would have to cognize such an existence as determined, and yet not as determined in time (which is impossible, since I cannot support my concept with any intuition), nevertheless, I can think freedom to myself, i.e., the representation of it at least contains no contradiction in itself, so long as our critical distinction prevails between the two ways of representing (sensible and intellectual), along with the limitation of the pure concepts of the understanding arising from it, and hence that of the principles flowing from them. Now suppose that morality necessarily presupposes freedom (in the strictest sense) as a property of our will, citing a priori as data for this freedom certain original practical principles lying in our reason, which would be absolutely impossible without the presupposition of Bxxix freedom, yet that speculative reason had proved that freedom cannot be thought at all, then that presupposition, namely the moral one, would necessarily have to yield to the other one, whose opposite contains an obvious contradiction; consequently freedom and with it morality (for the latter would contain no contradiction if freedom were not already presupposed) would have to give way to the mechanism of nature. But then, since for morality I need nothing more than that freedom should not contradict itself, that it should at least be thinkable that it should place no hindrance in the way of the mechanism of nature in the same action (taken in another relation), without it being necessary for me to have any further insight into it: the doctrine of morality asserts its place and doctrine of nature its own, which, however, would not have occurred if critique had not first taught us of our unavoidable ignorance in respect of the things in themselves and limited everything that we can cognize theoretically to mere appearances. Just the same sort of exposition of the positive utility of critical principles of pure reason can be
a Object
given in respect to the concepts of God of the simple nature of our soul, which, however, I forgo for the sake of brevity. I cannot even assume God, freedom and immortality for the sake of the nec- Bxxx –essary practical use of my reason unless I simultaneously deprive speculative reason of its pretension to extravagant insights; because in order to attain to such insights, speculative reason would have to help itself to principles that in fact reach only to objects of possible experience, which, if they were to be applied to what cannot be an object of experience, then they would always actually transform it into an appearance, and thus declare all practical extension of pure reason to be impossible. Thus I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith; and the dogmatism of metaphysics, i.e., the prejudice that without critique reason can make progress in metaphysics, is the true source of all unbelief conflicting with morality, which unbelief is always very dogmatic. –Thus even if it cannot be all that difficult to leave to posterity the legacy of a systematic metaphysics, constructed according to the critique of pure reason, this is still a gift deserving of no small respect; to see this, we need merely to compare the culture of reason that is set on the course of a secure science with reason’s unfounded groping and frivolous wandering about without critique, or to consider how much bet- Bxxxi –ter young people hungry for knowledge might spend their time than in the usual dogmatism that gives so early and so much encouragement to their complacent quibbling about things they do not understand, and things into which neither they nor anyone else in the world will ever have any insight, or even encourages them to launch on the invention of new thoughts and opinions, and thus to neglect to learn the well-grounded sciences; but we see it above all when we take account of the way critique puts an end for all future time to objections against morality and religion in a Socratic way, namely by the clearest proof of the ignorance of the opponent. For there has always been some metaphysics or other to be met with in the world, and there always continue to be one, and with it a dialectic of pure reason, because dialectic is natural to reason. Hence it is the first and most important occupation of philosophy to deprive dialectic once and for all of all disadvantageous influence, by blocking off the source of the errors.
***
COMMENTARY
This exceptionally dense and deeply important stretch of text begins with a mini-tutorial on Kant’s theory of cognition:
In the analytical part of the critique it is proved that space and time are only forms of sensible intuition, and therefore only conditions of the existence of the things as appearances, further that we have no concepts of the understanding and hence no elements for the cognition of things except insofar as an intuition can be given corresponding to these concepts, consequently that we can have cognition of no object as a thing in itself, but only insofar as it is an object (Object) of sensible intuition, i.e. as an appearance; from which follows the limitation of all even possible speculative cognition of reason to mere objects of experience. Yet the reservation must also be well noted, that even if we cannot cognize these same objects as things in themselves, we at least must be able to think them as things in themselves.* For otherwise there would follow the absurd proposition that there is an appearance without anything that appears. (CPR Bxxxv-xxxvi, boldfacing in the original)
* To cognize an object, it is required that I be able to prove its possibility (whether by the testimony of experience from its actuality or a priori through reason). But I can think whatever I like, as long as I do not contradict myself, i.e., as long as my concept is a possible thought, even if I cannot give any assurance whether or not there is a corresponding objecte somewhere within the sum total of all possibilities. But in order to ascribe objective validity to such a concept (real possibility, for the first sort of possibility was merely logical) something more is required. This “more,” however, need not be sought in theoretical sources of cognition; it may also lie in practical ones. (CPR Bxxxv-xxxvi n., boldfacing in the original)
It’s clear that in this context, cognition or Erkenntnis means judgment of experience, which in turn strictly conforms to the togetherness thesis:
Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is is thus just as necessary to make the mind’s concepts sensible (i.e., to an object to them in intuition) as it is to make its intuitions understandable (i.e., to bring them them under concepts). Further, these two faculties or capacities cannot exhange their functions. The understanding is not capable of intuiting anything, and the senses are not capable of thinking anything. Only from their unification can cognition arise. (CPR A51/B75-76)
Now the proper conscious representational (aka intentional) object of a judgment of experience is an object of experience, that is, a conceptually articulated or determined object, i.e., the object of an act of universal (All Fs are Gs), particular (Some Fs are Gs), or singular (This F is G) logical predication.
Outside that context, however, the proper conscious representational (aka intentional) object of an empirical intuition is an appearance, that is, a manifestly real object that isn’t conceptually articulated or determined:
The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called appearance. (CPR A20/B34, boldfacing in the original)
Things-in-themselves or noumena cannot be cognized either via a judgment of experience or via an empirical intuition because, if such objects were to exist, they would fall outside the limits of all human sensibility and therefore also outside the limits of all human experience, since that’s a proper sub-part of the larger domain of human sensibility.
But things in themselves or noumena can be conceptualized or thought in a way that’s what I’ve called thinly meaningful,[i] since all it takes to generate a thinly meaningful concept or thought is a logically non-contradictory or self-consistent (and, although Kant doesn’t explicitly mention it here, also a sortally well-formed or semantically coherent) general representation, aka an “indefinite description.”
For example, “round square” and “colorless green thing” are self-contradictory/self-inconsistent concepts, but not sortally ill-formed or semantically incoherent, aka nonsensical.
Indeed, as we’ll see later, according to Kant, sortally well-formed/semantically coherent but self-contradictory/self-inconsistent concepts can still be used to think impossible objects, an important point that Alexius Meinong later re-discovered and that phenomenologically illuminates the kind of mental representation or intentionality that’s in play in logical reasoning employing reductio arguments, much to Russell’s annoyance and rational uncharitable philosophical mockery.
Conversely, “procrastination-drinking quadruplicity” and “green idea” are sortally ill-formed/semantically incoherent and thereby nonsensical, but not self-contradictory/self-inconsistent, concepts through which nothing whatsoever is thought, not even impossible objects.
However, “colorless green idea” is not only self-contradictory/self-inconsistent but also ill-formed.
Nevertheless, merely non-contradictory/self-consistent (and sortally well-formed), i.e., thinly meaningful, concepts are not objectively valid or empirically meaningful, i.e., thickly meaningful, since that requires reference or relatedness to an actual or possible object of empirical intuition.
Objects of thinly meaningful concepts are (only) logically possible, whereas objects of thickly meaningful concepts are not only logically possible but also, at least, really possible and perhaps also actual.
Now in this connection, Kant makes two claims that are, prima facie, very puzzling.
First, he says
that even if we cannot cognize … objects as things in themselves, we at least must be able to think them as things in themselves. For otherwise there would follow the absurd proposition that there is an appearance without anything that appears. (CPR xxvi, boldfacing in the original)
The first sentence in this text says that things-in-themselves or noumena (“noumena” means literally “thought-entities”) are not cognizable in the sense of being representable as really possible or actual objects of experience, hence they cannot be known to actually exist, but are only thinkable, as logically possible objects.
But the second sentence seems to say, or at least to imply, that since the concept of an appearance analytically entails the concept of that which appears, i.e., the concept of a thing-in-itself/noumenon, then if an appearance actually exists, so does the thing-in-itself/noumenon that somehow grounds or metaphysically stands behind that appearance; but appearances actually exist; therefore, things-in-themselves/noumena actually exist.
But, interpreting the second sentence in a rationally charitable way, this cannot be what Kant really means.
To see this, consider the following argument drawn directly from classical metaphysics and classical Rationalism:
1. The concept of God is the concept of a perfect being.
2. The concept of a perfect being analytically contains the concepts of all its perfections.
3. The concept of existence is the concept of one of its perfections.
4. Therefore, God exists.
The conclusion is obviously a non sequitur, since all that follows from the three premises is that the concept of God is the concept of an existing being: but God’s actual existence or non-existence remains strictly uncognizable and unknowable, hence also strictly unprovable, according to Kant’s Critical cognitive semantics and theory of knowledge.
And that’s because God, which, if He/She/It/They were to exist, would be a thing-in-itself/noumenon, and therefore this entity isn’t either cognizable or knowable by means of thickly meaningful (i.e., objectively valid, or empirically meaningful) empirical intuitions and/or judgments of experience, but instead it’s only thinkable by means of thinly meaningful concepts; and the mere thinkability of a concept, no matter which concept it is, doesn’t entail that this concept has any actual existing instances, which would have to be empirically intuited and/or known by means of true judgments of experience.
That line of argument, in turn, is the gravamen of Kant’s famous critique of The Ontological Argument in The Ideal of Pure Reason (CPR A592-602/B620-630).
So if this critique applies to classical metaphysical and classical Rationalist reasoning about God, then by smooth generalization, it must also apply to classical metaphysical and classical Rationalist reasoning about any thing-in-itself or noumenon: hence what Kant is really saying here is that in classical metaphysical and classical Rationalist reasoning the concept of an appearance analytically contains the concept of a thing that appears, i.e., the concept of a thing-in-itself/noumenon, and not that any things-in-themselves/noumena actually exist, which for Kant is strictly uncognizable and unknowable, hence also strictly unprovable, one way or the other, in view of his Critical cognitive semantics and theory of knowledge.
Otherwise put, this is Kant’s radical agnosticism about things-in-themselves/noumena again.
Second, again on the face of it very puzzlingly, Kant says that
I can think whatever I like, as long as I do not contradict myself, i.e., as long as my concept is a possible thought, even if I cannot give any assurance whether or not there is a corresponding object somewhere within the sum total of all possibilities. But in order to ascribe objective validity to such a concept (real possibility, for the first sort of possibility was merely logical) something more is required. This “more,” however, need not be sought in theoretical sources of cognition; it may also lie in practical ones. (CPR Bxxvi n., boldfacing in the original)
What Kant seems to be saying is that even though concepts of things-in-themselves/noumena are never objectively valid (thickly meaningful, empirically meaningful), nevertheless sometimes they’re objectively valid, which of course is an outright self-contradiction.
But again, that cannot be what he’s really saying, if we interpret him in a rationally charitable way.
In fact, what he’s really saying depends on our recognizing two subtle yet crucial points about his general theory of cognition or Erkenntnis.
The first point is that throughout the Critical Philosophy and especially during the Critical period from 1781–1787, quite confusingly, Kant uses the term “cognition/Erkenntnis” in two importantly different senses:
(i) a broad sense, present in both the A and B editions of CPR, which includes not only all theoretical conscious representational object-directedness, or intentionality (see especially the famous or notorious Stufenleiter text at CPR A320/B376), but also all practical conscious representational directeness or intentionality, and
(ii) a narrow sense, present only in the B edition, which means the same as judgment of experience.
What’s particularly misleading about the footnote at CPR Bxxvi n., then, is that although the footnote is appended to a text in which Kant is clearly talking about cognition/Erkenntnis in the narrow sense, in the footnote, he’s in fact talking about ojective validity (thick meaningfuless, empirical meaningfulness) insofar as it applies to cognition/Erkenntnis in the broad sense.
And in that broad sense, not only can theoretical cognitions have objective validity (thick meaningfulness, empirical meaningfuless), but also so can practical cognitions.
This in turn directly implies one of the most important but also least acknowledged points about Kant’s theory of free agency, which is that our transcendentally and practically free choices and acts all have practical objective validity:
Practical freedom can be proved through experience…. We thus cognize practical freedom through experience, as one of the natural causes, namely a causality of reason in the determination of the will (CPR A802-803/B830-831)
—even though these free choices and acts don’t have theoretical objective objective validity.
How can this be?
The short but sweet answer is that although our free choices and acts cannot be cognized in the narrow sense by any deterministic or otherwise mechanistic natural science/physics, via judgments of experience, nevertheless they not only can be but actually are consciously represented in an objectively valid way, beyond any deterministic or otherwise natural science/physics,
(i) via our essentially non-conceptual intuitions of our own living organismic processes (aka “the feeling of life,” aka telological intuitions),
(ii) via our first-order desires and what Kant calls “the power of choice” (Willkür),
(iii) via the feeling of moral respect (Achtung) for everyone’s human dignity and the moral law innately specified within ourselves, and above all,
(iv) via our self-consciousness awareness of our own autonomous free agency, which in the second Critique Kant calls“the Fact of Reason” (Faktum der Vernunft) (CPrR 5: 31; see also 5: 6, 42-43, 47-48, 55-57, 91-94, and 104-108).[ii]
These four modes of objectively valid practical cognition, in turn—by means of an evidentially indisputable and therefore sufficiently justified practical commitment that Kant calls “moral belief” (moralischen Glauben) (CPR A828/B856, boldfacing in the original), and sometimes, in direct antithetical contrast with “[scientific] knowledge” (Wissen), what he simply calls “belief,” aka “faith” (Glauben) (CPR Bxxx, boldfacing in the original)—also collectively demonstrate the inherent epistemic and metaphysical incompleteness and limits of deterministic or otherwise mechanistic natural science/physics.[iii]
In short, Kant is saying that we must rigorously restrict the explanatory and ontological scope of mechanistic natural science/physics, in order to make room for our source-incompatibilist free agency and morality.[iv]
I’ll have more to say about this profoundly important point [in the next installment].
NOTES
[i] See, e.g., R. Hanna, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), ch. 2.
[ii] See, e.g., R. Hanna, Kant, Science, and Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), ch. 8; R. Hanna, Deep Freedom and Real Persons: A Study in Metaphysics (THE RATIONAL HUMAN CONDITION, Vol. 2) (New York: Nova Science, 2018), ch. 3; and R. Hanna, “Sensibility First: How to Interpret Kant’s Theoretical and Practical Philosophy,” ,” Estudos Kantianos 9 (2021): 97-120, available online at URL = <https://revistas.marilia.unesp.br/index.php/ek/article/view/12288>,
[iii] See, e.g., R. Hanna, “Kant’s B Deduction, Cognitive Organicism, the Limits of Natural Science, and the Autonomy of Consciousness,” Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 4 (2019): 29-46, available online HERE; and R. Hanna, “Can Physics Explain Physics? Anthropic Principles and Transcendental Idealism,” in L. Caranti (ed.), Kant and The Problem of Knowledge in the Contemporary World (London: Routledge, 2022), also available online in preview HERE.
[iv] It’s crucial to recognize, however, that even if Newtonian physics and also the contemporary Standard Models of particle physics and cosmology are indeed mechanistic, and must be rigorously restricted in their explanatory and ontological scope, yet there are still other, alternative models of particle physics and cosmology that are non-mechanistic—see, e.g., I. Prigogine, The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature (New York: Free Press, 1997). That all being so, it would then follow that physics could in fact finally complete itself only by epistemically and metaphysically incorporating non-mechanistic, source-incompatibilist free agency and morality; see, e.g., R. Hanna, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE: Uniscience and the Modern World, ch. 4, (Unpublished MS, 2022), available online HERE; and Hanna,“Can Physics Explain Physics? Anthropic Principles and Transcendental Idealism.”
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