Is Kantianism The Ultimate Form of Western Philosophy?, #1.

Engraving of Kant at his desk (Birck, 18^th century)

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Is Kantianism The Ultimate Form of Western Philosophy?, #1

In “Kantian Futurism,” I argued that

all foreseeably future philosophy worldwide will be a series of positive or negative footnotes to Kant. Moreover, as regards negative footnotes, the 140-year-long anti-Kantian tradition of Analytic philosophy is in fact now coming to an end, as post-classical Analytic philosophy crashes, burns, and goes down forever into the ash-heap of history…. Therefore, (i) the times they are a-changing, and (ii) the near-future emergence of some or another creatively revised-&-updated version of Kant’s philosophy, as the central and dominant world philosophy, is historically inevitable. For all these reasons, forward to Kant! must be humankind’s philosophical futurist rallying cry. (Hanna, 2024a: p. 5; see also Hanna, 2008)

But on what rational grounds can Kantianism justify its claim to be the ultimate form of Western philosophy? This in turn is equivalent to the question, what is Kant’s Critical and post-Critical philosophy and how can it be rationally justified?

As is well-known , during his “pre-Critical” period starting in the 1740s Kant was a fully committed classical Rationalist metaphysician in the tradition of Leibniz and Christian Wolff. during his pre-Critical period, to the middle-to-late 1760s and the early 1770s, 60s and the early 1770s, when, by his own retrospective testimony in 1783, he was suddenly jolted out of his Leibnizian and Wolffian dreams by a skeptical Humean Empiricist wake-up call:

I openly confess that my remembering David Hume was the very thing which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction. I was far from following him in the conclusions at which he arrived … [But if] we start from a well-founded, but undeveloped, thought which another has bequeathed to us, we may well hope by continued reflection to advance further than the acute man to whom we owe the first spark of light. (Prol 4: 260)

It’s plausible to think that this particular wake-up call happened in July 1771, when Kant would have read a German translation of the “Conclusion” section of book I of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), published in the Königsberger gelehrte Zeitung, entitled “Nachtdenken eines Skeptikers” (“Night Thoughts of a Skeptic”). In the “Conclusion,” Hume re-states the main claims of his skeptical Empiricist analysis of the concepts of causation and causal necessity. Kant’s reading knowledge of English was fairly limited, so it seems quite likely that he never read either the Treatise or the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) themselves, although he must have originally encountered Hume’s ideas and writings in the 1750s or 60s, in German translation,[i] in order to be able to “remember” them in 1771. It’s also quite possible that Kant’s memory of Hume was further jogged by reading a 1772 German translation of the Scottish common sense philosopher James Beattie’s highly influential 1770 Essay on The Nature and Immutability of Truth, in which Beattie carefully describes and then vigorously attacks Hume’s skeptical Empiricist analysis of causation and causal necessity. In any case, in the Treatise and again in the first Enquiry, Hume defends and develops three crucial theses, each of which importantly influenced Kant, whether positively or negatively, after 1771: (i) all human cognition is strictly limited as to its content, truth, and epistemic scope by sensory experience, (ii) the class of all judgments is exhaustively divided into those concerning “relations of ideas” (that is, necessary a priori definitional or stipulative truths, for example, truths of logic or mathematics) and those concerning “matters of fact” (that is, contingent a posteriori experimental truths, for example, truths of natural science), and (iii) all our judgments concerning supposedly necessary causal relations in fact refer exclusively to experience and matters of fact, and their content and justification is determined solely by non-rational “custom” or “habit,” not reason. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant fully accepts a carefully qualified version of Hume’s thesis (i), namely: (i*) all human cognition begins in causally-triggered sense experience, but at the same time neither the form nor the content of human cognition is reducible to or determined by causally-triggered sense experience and/or matters of fact, that is, the form and the content of human cognition is necessarily underdetermined by all actual or possible sense experience and/or contingent facts, that is, the form and content of human cognition necessarily is, at least in part, non-empirical or a priori, and also firmly rejects Hume’s theses (ii) and (iii).

In another fundamentally important and closely-related autobiographical remark in the Reflexionen, Kant says that “the year ’69 gave me great light” (R 5037, 18: 69). By this, I think he means that in that particular year—falling exactly midway between his seminal 1768 essay “Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Directions in Space” (aka “Directions in Space”) and his breakthrough 1770 Inaugural Dissertation, “On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World” (aka “The Inaugural Dissertation”)—he discovered and formulated the revolutionary three-part transcendentally idealistic real-metaphysical doctrine that (i) all the proper objects of a rational but also specifically human capacity for cognition are only manifestly real, veridically apparent, or phenomenal objects of the human senses—namely, “appearances” (Erscheinungen)—and never non-manifest, Really Real, non-apparent, essentially non-relational or monad-like, noumenal objects—namely, “things-in-themselves”(Dinge an sich), (ii) the ontic structures of manifestly real, veridically apparent, or phenomenal physical spacetime necessarily conform to the innate and non-empirical mentalistic structure of the rational human cognitive capacity for sensory intuition, and (iii) the ontic structures of all manifestly real, veridically apparent, or phenomenal natural objects and states-of-affairs, together with all the causal-dynamic relations between manifest, apparent, or phenomenal natural objects and states-of-affairs also necessarily conform to the innate and non-empirical mentalistic structure of the rational human cognitive capacities for conceptualization, judgment, understanding or thought, and logical reasoning.

I’ll call thesis (i) The Cognitive Idealism Thesis, and I’ll call the conjunction of theses (ii) and (iii), The Conformity Thesis. It’s crucial to note that The Cognitive Idealism Thesis is substantively different from both Berkeley’s metaphsical or dogmatic idealism thesis, which says that (i) matter is impossible, and (ii) necessarily, everything is either (iia) an idea in a conscious mind or (iib) a conscious mind, and also from Descartes’s skeptical or problematic ideaLism thesis, which says that (iii) possibly nothing exists outside my own conscious states. In sharp contrast to Berkeley’s metaphysical or dogmatic idealism, then, (i) Kant’s cognitive idealism does not apply to all objects whatsoever, (ii) Kant’s cognitive idealism does not say that matter is impossible, and (iii) Kant’s cognitive idealism does not say that all the proper objects of all human cognition are nothing but merely subjective ideas, that is, objects existing merely in “inner sense.” Correspondingly, in sharp contrast to Descartes’s skeptical or problematic idealism, Kant’s cognitive idealism does not imply that it’s possible that nothing exists outside my conscious states, namely, my inner sense. Sharply on the contrary to Berkelyan and Cartesian idealism alike, as the B edition’s “Refutation of Idealism” makes fully explicit, Kant’s cognitive idealism in fact implies that,assuming the fact of my self-consciousness of my own conscious states, namely, of the contents of my own inner sense, then necessarily, something really and truly exists outside my conscious states in space.

Now, what does Kant mean by “appearances” or Erscheinungen? In her 1947 novel, Manservant and Maidservant, Ivy Compton-Burnett makes an extremely profound observation about the concept of appearances:

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth. But we seem to have no other. (Compton-Burnett, 1947: p. 5)

As I read Compton-Burnett, she’s saying three philosophically important things: (i) that the concept of appearances is ambiguous, (ii) that according to the first or “falsidical” oncept of appearances, the very idea of “an appearance” means a mere seeming, which is consistent with falsity and illusion, and (iii) that according to the second or “veridical” concept of appearances, the very idea of an appearance means that we have no clue to the truth about reality except appearances and that appearances in this sense simply are the objective truth about manifest reality.

More precisely, according to the second or “veridical” concept of appearances, the very idea of an appearance means that things appear to be a certain way, precisely because they really and truly are that way. For example, if I’m Sherlock Holmes and have just solved a very subtle case and I say by way of conclusion, “it appears that Professor Moriarity is the culprit,” then Professor Moriarity manifestly really and truly is the culprit. But even less dramatically, generally speaking, necessarily, under ordinary circumstances, if Tom or Dick or Mary appears at the door, then Tom or Dick or Mary manifestly really and truly is at the door. Appearances that fall under this second or “veridical” concept of appearances are therefore what I call veridical appearances. In ordinary German, the term that corresponds to the first or “falsidical” concept of appearances is Schein. Correspondingly, then, Kant’s term Erscheinungen is a philosophical technical term that means veridical appearances. For Kant, veridical appearances reveal the empirically real or manifestly real world to rational human cognizers. Therefore, Kant’s transcendental idealism is also an empirical realism or a manifest realism:

[The] empirical realist grants to matter, as appearance, a reality which need not be inferred, but is immediately perceived (unmittelbar wahrgenommen). (CPR A371)

Every outer perception … immediately proves (beweiset unmittelbar) something real in space, or rather [what is represented through outer perception] is itself the real; to that extent, empirical realism is beyond doubt, i.e., to our outer intuitions (Anschauungen) there corresponds something real in space. (CPR A375)

Granting all that as philosophical backdrop, then what would justify Kant’s asserting The Idealism Thesis and The Conformity Thesis, that is, what would justify his asserting the truth of transcendental idealism? I think we can, rationally charitably and plausibly, philosophically reconstruct his basic argument for transcendental idealism in the following eight-step way.

First, let’s suppose, as initial assumptions, (i) the minimal Empiricist assumption that all human cognition begins in causally-triggered sense-experience, (ii) the minimal Rationalist assumption that we rational human animals actually cognitively possess some non-empirical or a priori mental representations, and also (iii) that we have authentic non-empirical or a priori knowledge of at least some objectively necessary truths, for example, in logic, mathematics, and metaphysics. And for expository convenience, let’s call all non-empirical or a priori mental representations, including a priori beliefs and a priori knowledge, “a priori cognitions.”

Second, what then rules out the skeptical possibility that the correspondence between the abstract, non-empirical objects and truth-making states-of-affairs on the one hand, and our a priori cognitions on the other, is nothing but a massive coincidence?

Third, if it is a massive coincidence, then the correspondence between our a priori cognitions and their abstract, non-empirical objects or truth-making states-of-affairs is merely accidental or contingent, and could just as easily have failed to obtain. Again for expository convenience, let’s call this deep skeptical worry The Problem of Cognitive-Semantic Luck.

Fourth, one possible solution to The Problem of Cognitive-Semantic Luck is that the abstract, non-empirical objects and states-of-affairs naturally cause our a priori cognitions. That’s the classical Empiricist or Lockean-Humean solution.

Fifth, the basic problem with the classical Empiricist solution, however, is that it’s doubly incompatible with the initial assumption that the cognitions caused by object and states of affairs are non-empirical or a priori, both in the sense that all cognitions that are manifestly really naturally caused must be empirical or a posteriori, and also in the sense that abstract, non-empirical objects and states-of-affairs, which do not exist as embedded inside spacetime, cannot enter into manifestly real natural causal relations with human cognizers, who do exist as embedded inside spacetime. In this respect, Kant’s recognition of The Problem of Cognitive-Semantic Luck is a substantive anticipation of what 20^th and 21^st century epistemologists and philosophers of mathematics and logic call “Benacerraf’s Dilemma” (Benacerraf, 1973; see also Hanna, 2015: chs. 6-8).

Sixth, another pair of possible solutions to The Problem of Cognitive-Semantic Luck are that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good or non-deceiving God creates either (i) a direct non-causal cognitive relation of acquaintance (kennen), or (ii) an indirect non-relational pre-established harmony, between the abstract, non-empirical referents and truth-makers of a priori cognitions on the one hand, and those a priori cognitions on the other. Those, respectively, are the Cartesian and Leibnizian solutions.

Seventh, given the fact that all the proper objects of a rational but also specifically human capacity for cognition are phenomena or manifestly real natural objects, and never noumena or things-in-themselves, then the appeal to a non-deceiving God and to God’s creation of humanly-inaccessible mysterious cognitive acquaintance relations or equally mysterious pre-established harmonies seems no better justified—in effect, no more than an arbitrary and question-begging appeal to a deus ex machina—than the skeptical hypothesis that the correspondence is nothing but a massive coincidence. Indeed, in the light of the implausibility of the Cartesian and Leibnizian deus ex machina-style solutions, what could decisively rule out the further skeptical possibility that the correspondence is simply illusory and has been created by an Evil Demon, namely, by a God-like being who is a deceiver?

Eighth, and finally, in view of the failures of the classical Empiricist, Cartesian, and Leibnizian solutions to The Problem of Cognitive-Semantic Luck, and assuming that these three possible solutions exhaust the logical space of all the most promising and relevant solutions to The Problem, then we can infer the truth of transcendental idealism, by philosophical abduction, aka transcendental proof, as the only adequate solution.

NOTE

[i] The first German translation of Hume’s first Enquiry was published in 1755.

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