Strawson x Allison
-
Upload
baderneiro-ericsson -
Category
Documents
-
view
54 -
download
6
description
Transcript of Strawson x Allison
MATTHEW M. BRAICH [email protected]
STRAWSON AND ALLISON ON KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM
MATT BRAICH
LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE
PORTLAND, OREGON
MAY 2008
PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT
SUBMITTED in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts
BRAICH
2
STRAWSON AND ALLISON ON KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM
ABSTRACT: Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism is no stranger to controversy. A primary source of the controversy is the question whether Kant regards the distinction between things in themselves and appearances as metaphysical or epistemological. Advocates of the metaphysical interpretation (specifically, P.F. Strawson) insist that things in themselves and appearances are distinct entities occupying different ontological realms: the phenomenal realm and the noumenal realm. By contrast, advocates of the epistemological interpretation (specifically, Henry Allison) insist that things in themselves and appearances are numerically identical entities considered from different perspectives: the empirical perspective and the transcendental perspective. While both interpretations offer plausible accounts of transcendental idealism, neither is completely compatible with the text. The question, then, is: what elements of Kant’s philosophy must we sacrifice in order to adopt either interpretation? In this paper, I answer this question and argue that, though each view fails to cohere fully with the text, the problem may not lie in the details of the interpretations. There is another possibility: transcendental idealism may not itself be a single, self-consistent doctrine.
Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism is no stranger to controversy. As one of
Kant’s earliest critics, F. H. Jacobi, famously writes: “the ‘thing in itself’ is the kind of concept
without which it is impossible to enter Kant’s system, but with which it is impossible to get out
of the system.”1 Jacobi’s remarks highlight an apparent tension in the first Critique: on the one
hand, Kant restricts the range of things we can cognize to possible objects of experience, while,
on the other hand, his system relies on uncognizable entities. For many critics, this tension tolls
the death knell for transcendental idealism. In The Bounds of Sense, for example, P.F. Strawson
jettisons things in themselves in an effort to absolve Kant from what he regards as
inconsistencies. “The only element in transcendental idealism which has any significant part to
play in those structures,” Strawson writes, “is the phenomenalistic idealism according to which
the physical world is nothing apart from perceptions.” 2 If we accept this metaphysical
interpretation of Kant, the dilemma is twofold: should Kant continue to talk about things in
themselves, his system runs into apparent contradictions; yet, should he abandon things in
themselves, as Strawson urges, his system operates exclusively at the phenomenal level.
1 F. H. Jacobi, David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Gespräch, Breslau: Gottlieb Löwe, New York and London: Garland (1787). 2 P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, London: Methuen (1966), page 246.
BRAICH
3
More recently, however, this interpretative tradition has lost favor among Kantians.
Since the publication of Henry Allison’s Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, commentators have
increasingly regarded the distinction between things in themselves and appearances as
epistemological, rather than metaphysical. 3 By contrasting things in themselves with
appearances, Allison insists, Kant means only to underscore the limits of our cognitive powers;
he is not, importantly, distinguishing between two ontologically distinct sets of entities—i.e.,
appearances and those supersensible entities that lie, as it were, outside of our cognitive field.
Consequently, Jacobi’s original criticism is avoided: Kant can coherently talk about things in
themselves because those entities just are appearances considered in abstraction from the
conditions of our cognizing them.
The question, then, is whether Kant himself regards the distinction between things in
themselves and appearances as metaphysical or epistemological. Unfortunately, the text cannot
answer this question. Allen Wood notes this problem:
I think much of the puzzlement about transcendental idealism arises from the fact that Kant himself formulates transcendental idealism in a variety of ways, and it is not at all clear how, or whether, his statements of it can all be reconciled, or taken as statements of a single, self-consistent doctrine. I think Kant’s central formulations suggest two quite distinct and mutually incompatible doctrines.4
Compare, for example, the following two passages:
We should consider that bodies are not objects in themselves that are present to us, but rather a mere appearance of who knows what unknown object; that motion is not the effect of this unknown cause, but merely the appearance of its influence on our sense.5 We can have cognition of no object as a thing in itself, but only insofar as it is an object of sensible intuition, i.e. as an appearance…we [assume] the distinction
3 Henry Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, Connecticut: Yale University Press (1983). 4 Allen Wood, Kant, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing (2005), pages 63-64. 5 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, New York: Cambridge University Press (1998), A387; my italics.
BRAICH
4
between things as objects of experience and the very same things as things in themselves.6
Because such inconsistencies preclude the possibility of arriving at a univocal interpretation of
the text, commentators, including Wood, have been forced to rely on such extra-textual
considerations as charity when adjudicating between the metaphysical and epistemological views.
Though this approach has benefits, it raises the question: what elements of Kant’s philosophy
must we sacrifice in order to adopt either interpretation?
In this paper, I address this question in three sections. In section one, I outline three
central roles things in themselves play in Kant’s philosophy. In section two, I examine
Strawson’s interpretation (commonly called the “two-worlds” view) and argue that he fails to
account for the role things in themselves play in Kant’s moral philosophy. In section three, I
examine Allison’s interpretation (commonly called the “dual-aspect” view) and argue that he
fails to account for the role things in themselves play in affecting the faculty of intuition—a
crucial aspect of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. I conclude by arguing that, though each view
fails to meet all of these constraints, the problem may not lie in the details of the interpretations.
There is another possibility: transcendental idealism may not itself be a single, self-consistent
doctrine.
I. THE ROLES OF THINGS IN THEMSELVES
Though Kant is quite clear that we can cognize (and hence know) only appearances, and
not things in themselves, he uses the notion of a thing in itself throughout his philosophy. In
“Things in Themselves,” Robert Adams outlines the four roles this notion plays in Kant’s work,
6 KrV, Bxxvi-Bxxvii; my italics.
BRAICH
5
but I am here only concerned with three.7 The first role (the negative role) arises in the context of
Kant’s theoretical philosophy, specifically, the “Transcendental Aesthetic,” in which Kant
specifies the a priori conditions under which we intuit the matter of experience. The second role
(the affecting role) arises in Kant’s transcendental account of how appearances occur. Lastly, the
third role (the moral role) arises in the context of Kant’s practical philosophy, specifically, in his
attempt to ground the possibility of freedom, God and the soul in the noumenal realm. We shall
consider these three roles in order.
1) The central thesis behind the “Transcendental Aesthetic” is that the faculty of intuition
comprises two a priori forms: space and time. An object, for Kant, counts as a possible object of
experience if and only if it can be given in intuition, and hence ordered in time and, if it is an
outer intuition, space. Against this picture of what possible objects of experience are, Kant
contrasts things in themselves. He holds that we experience objects not as they are in themselves,
but only as they appear in relation to our faculty of intuition, in time and space. This use of the
thing in itself to clarify what appearances are not constitutes the negative role the concept plays
in Kant’s philosophy.
2) Kant bases his transcendental psychology on primarily two faculties of the mind: the
intuition and the understanding. In terms of producing experience, the understanding plays an
active part; it actively organizes the manifold of intuition under the rubric of a priori categories,
e.g., causality. By contrast, the intuition plays a passive part; it receives the manifold through an
interaction with something else, presumably beyond the range of our experience. Kant identifies
7 Robert Adams, “Things in Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 57, No. 4 (1997), pages 801-825. I have left out the regulative role because it does not directly pertain to my discussion of Allison and Strawson.
BRAICH
6
things in themselves as the source of this interaction, and perhaps to avoid illicit metaphysical
commitments, he characterizes that relation in terms of “affection” or “grounding.”8
3) One of Kant’s central concerns in the first Critique is reconciling Newtonian physics
with morality. At the level of appearances, Kant is a Newtonian: he holds that everything in the
empirical world happens in accordance with the laws of nature. This includes not only natural
events, but also human action. Consequently, Kant asks: given that physical laws (as specified
by Newton) determine all events in the empirical world, how are freedom and morality possible?
Kant answers this question by positing the noumenal realm. He argues that so long as there could
be a realm independent of the empirically determined order of our experience, there remains at
least the logical possibility of God, morality and the soul. These moral postulates, then,
constitute the third role things in themselves play in Kant’s work.
Of these three roles, the first two— the affecting role and the negative role—have the
largest influence on how Strawson and Allison respectively formulate their interpretations of
transcendental idealism. Strawson emphasizes role (2), and, as a result, his interpretation
presents the relationship between things in themselves and appearances in terms of a quasi-
casual “A-relation,” i.e. the relation that holds between things in themselves and intuition.9
Conversely, Allison emphasizes role (1), the negative role, and as a result, his interpretation
maintains an identity between things in themselves and appearances, where the two differ only
insofar as the latter is considered as a thing in space and time and the former as a thing in the
abstract.
8 See, e.g., KrV, A380. Regarding the locution “ground,” Wood writes that Kant uses this “perhaps because it seems to him more abstract and metaphysically non-committal, better suited to express a relation that can never be cognized empirically but only thought through the pure understanding.” Wood, Kant, page 64. 9 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 236.
BRAICH
7
II. The Two-Worlds View
The two-worlds view proceeds from a metaphysical interpretation of transcendental
idealism. Advocates of this view hold that things in themselves and appearances are numerically
distinct entities related to one another through a casual process, which Kant articulates in terms
of affection. Experience, then, is in part the result of things in themselves affecting the intuition
such that they produce in us spatiotemporal representations, appearances. This leaves us with
two distinct realms: the noumenal realm, from which the process of affection proceeds, causing
in us mental representations of things; and the phenomenal realm, in which these representations
are structured by the active faculties of the mind, appearing to us as objects (bodies in space and
time) governed by the physical laws of nature.
Strawson’s own interpretation of transcendental idealism agrees with this general picture
of the two-worlds view. He begins with the basic two-worlds thesis “there exists the sphere of
supersensible reality, of things, neither spatial nor temporal, as they are in themselves.”10 In the
realm of things in themselves, he continues, “there obtains a certain complex relation (or a class
of cases of this relation) which we can speak of, on the model of a causal relation, in terms of
‘affection’ and ‘being affect by.’”11 Strawson refers to this complex relation as the “A-relation”
and explains that while the A-relation holds only in the noumenal realm, it is responsible for
producing phenomena (hence, experience): “experience is the outcome of this complex quasi-
causal relation holding in the sphere of things in themselves; and the co-operation of all the
elements so far mentioned [i.e. the intuition and understanding] is essential to its production.”12
While the objects of experience are real in the sense that they enjoy “their own states and
10 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 236. 11 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 236. 12 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 236.
BRAICH
8
relations irrespective of the occurrence of any particular states of awareness of them,” their
existence wholly depends on the operations of the mind; and thus, “apart from perceptions, they
are really nothing at all.”13 Such ideality, then, gives appearances a distinct ontological status:
though grounded in the noumenal realm, they remain nothing over and above perceptions
metaphysically dependent on the mind (but not any particular mind).
Once we consider this doctrine in relation to Kant’s epistemology, however, difficulties
arise. The following schema of the two-worlds view illuminates these problems:
a) Things in themselves exist.
b) Things in themselves cause appearances.
c) We can cognize only appearances.
A tension arises between claims (a) and (b) and claim (c). If we accept (c), then it seems we
must accept the following two corollaries:
C1) We cannot cognize things in themselves (and hence cannot know whether
they exist).
C2) We cannot know whether things in themselves cause appearances.14
Both corollaries conflict with the metaphysical claims above, so we must either deny (a) and (b)
or deny (C1) and (C2). If we deny (C1) and (C2), then Kant begins to resemble a rationalist,
insofar he would have to hold that we can cognize the true nature of things by virtue of reason
alone. Kant would doubtless resist such a conclusion, since he considers the rationalists
“dogmatic” and prone to metaphysical speculation.15 However, if we deny (a) and (b), then Kant
becomes a kind of idealist, in that he would have to reject the existence of extra-cognitive objects
13 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 237. 14 This schema, with a few minor changes, comes from Rae Langton, Kantian Humility, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1998), pages 7-8. 15 KrV, Aix.
BRAICH
9
in favor of mental items. Though Kant regards his philosophy as a form of realism, at least at the
empirical level, Strawson resolves the tension above by opting for this alternative, thus rendering
Kant an idealist. Before considering Strawson’s conclusion, however, an overview of Kant’s
epistemology is required.
The contradiction between claims (a) and (b) and claim (c) derives from Kant’s doctrine
that the categories of the understanding have legitimate application only with respect to objects
of possible experience, not things in themselves. Experience, on Kant’s view, consists in the
interplay of the understanding and the intuition. Though both faculties are necessary for
experience, neither is by itself sufficient: the intuition only receives the matter of experience,
while the understanding only provides structures (concepts) for organizing it—hence, Kant’s
famous dictum, “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”16
One condition for our ability to cognize objects, then, is that the object be given in intuition.
Since things in themselves cannot be given in intuition, it follows that the categories of the
understanding cannot be applied legitimately to these things. Indeed, Kant’s criticism of the
rationalists, and, specifically Leibniz, consists in his claim that the pure concepts of the
understanding, e.g., God and the soul, are by themselves insufficient for real knowledge, and that
something else is needed, namely, empirical content.
The problem, however, is that claims (a) and (b) specify a categorical relation (causality)
that obtains outside of experience. By claiming that things in themselves affect intuition, Kant
thus appears to violate the basic tenet of his epistemology, that the concepts of the understanding
apply only to appearances, not things in themselves. Moreover, Kant cannot claim that things in
themselves exist, since, on his view, existence is also a category. Hence, not only does the
16 KrV, A51/B75.
BRAICH
10
doctrine of affection violate his epistemology, but so does the basic claim that things in
themselves exist. On these grounds, Strawson rejects (a) and (b), the metaphysical theses, and
argues that Kant is at best an inconsistent Berkeley.17 “The only element in transcendental
idealism which has any significant part to play in to structures,” he writes, “is the
phenomenalistic idealism according to which the physical world is nothing apart from
perceptions.” 18
Consequently, Strawson dismisses the practical role things in themselves play in Kant’s
philosophy, role (3). His point is that, without things in themselves, Kant does not face the
problem of contradicting himself when talking about things at the transcendental level. However,
Kant’s talk about things in themselves is not as contradictory as Strawson thinks, and much of
the problem here rests on Kant’s semantic theory. Strawson takes the standard interpretation of
this theory, arguing that, on Kant’s view, a concept (or lexical item, for that matter) is
meaningful just in case its object can be given or instantiated in possible experience.19 Kant
articulates this theory in various forms throughout the first Critique, though perhaps the most
concise articulation occurs at (A239/B298-A242/B300):
It is also requisite for one to make an abstract concept sensible, i.e., display the object that corresponds to it in intuition, since without this [intuition] the concept would remain (as one says) without sense, i.e., without significance.
If Kant’s point is that a concept without empirical application lacks meaning or sense altogether,
then any proposition about things in themselves, including, importantly, those that arise in the
context of Kant’s practical philosophy, become meaningless.20
17 Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, page 4. 18 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 246. 19 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, pages 263-270. 20 This would, then, be a point of overlap between Kant and the Logical Positivists, who tried to reduce meaningful propositions to only those that are analytic or empirically verifiable.
BRAICH
11
However, this is not Kant’s considered view—or, at least, not of all it. Rather, Kant’s
point is that our concepts of things in themselves lack a use, not a meaning. 21 In the
“Transcendental Analytic,” for example, he writes: “even after abstraction from every sensible
condition, [the pure concepts of the understanding have] significance, but only a logical
significance.”22 As this passage suggests, Kant deploys two levels of meaning: logical meaning
and empirical meaning. We can think of the former as something like syntactic meaning and the
latter as something like semantic meaning. Though our concepts of noumena and things in
themselves have no use in the empirical world, they retain meaning at a syntactical level. It is
mistaken, therefore, to attribute to Kant the view that all concepts that lack empirical use are
meaningless, since such a view disregards the distinction between the two types of meaning.
Furthermore, Kant holds that while we cannot cognize things in themselves, we can
nevertheless think them. In the preface to the second edition, he articulates this distinction:
To cognize an object, it is required that I be able to prove its possibility…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 object somewhere within the sum total of all possibilities.23
Unlike cognizable objects—which include only those objects for which we have concepts that
could, at least in principle, be instantiated—thinkable objects are those whose concepts can be
thought without contradiction.24 The range of objects we can think is, therefore, far broader than
the range of objects we can cognize. Indeed, it may be infinitely broader, for we can think
21 J.P. Nolan, “Kant on Meaning: Two Studies,” Kant-Studien, Vol 70 (1979), pages 113-130. 22 KrV, A147/B186. 23 KrV, Bxxvi. 24 I say “in principle” to include concepts like UNICORN. Though no unicorn is actual, we could nevertheless specify the empirical conditions under which UNICORN could correctly pick out an object in the world. Hence, unicorns count as possible objects of experience, and are therefore cognizable, at least in principle. In other words, the extension of ‘possible objects of experience’ includes objects in all possible worlds, near and far.
BRAICH
12
anything that is logically possible, but can cognize only those things that are really possible.25 In
turn, this distinction plays a central role in Kant’s practical philosophy. Insofar as we can think
the concepts God, the soul and freedom consistently, that is, without logical contradiction, then
we can believe, though not know, that morality is grounded in the noumenal realm. By opening
up this possibility, Kant is not contradicting his epistemology, as Strawson would have it, but is
instead stressing the extent to which our moral commitments are based on faith, rather than
knowledge, and hence, his famous expression, “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room
for faith.”26
A coherent view begins to emerges once we consider (a), (b) and (c) in relation to the
thought/cognition distinction. Recall that claim (c) entails only that we cannot cognize things in
themselves, though it makes no mention of our capacity to think them. If we read (a) and (b) as
deriving from thought alone, and not cognition, then Kant can consistently hold all three claims;
that is, he can think things in themselves exist, and he can think things in themselves affect the
intuition, as logical possibilities, while at the same time maintaining minimal metaphysical
commitments. Henry Allison proposes a version of this reading, and though it presents a
deflationary view of Kant, who, at times, appears to lament the fact that while we can think about
things in themselves, we cannot know much about them, his interpretation does absolve Kant
from many of the charges the two-worlds view raises.
III. THE DUAL-ASPECT VIEW
Unlike the two-worlds view, which identifies transcendental idealism as the centerpiece
of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, the dual-aspect view holds that the distinction between things
25 Adams, “Things in Themselves,” pages 801-825. Adams provides an analysis of how logical and real possibility work in Kant’s critical philosophy. 26 KrV, Bxxx.
BRAICH
13
in themselves and appearances is motivated by Kant’s overall epistemic concerns. Advocates of
this view insist that Kant’s Copernican revolution consists not in the claim that there exist two
distinct realms, of which we can know only one, but rather in his epistemic doctrine that the a
priori principles of the mind determine how humans experience objects.27 Given how we
necessarily structure experience, this view holds, it is epistemically possible that objects of
experience would have an existence in themselves, outside of space, time and the categories of
the understanding. To talk about things in themselves, then, is to talk about the things we intuit
but from a different perspective: the transcendental perspective. Hence, Kant’s distinction
hinges not on metaphysical concerns, but on how we consider the objects of experience: either
we can consider such objects in relation to the conditions of our cognizing them, i.e., as
appearances, or we can consider these very same things apart from those condition, i.e., as things
as they exist in themselves.28
Allison’s interpretation of transcendental idealism takes a stronger stance regarding the
ontological nature of things in themselves, arguing that they are not real in any rich sense but
rather serve as mere methodological postulates. His strategy is to show that the concept of a
thing in itself (as well as other associated concepts, such as noumena, the transcendental object
and the object in general = X) derives from transcendental reflection, and is thus only a product
27 KrV, Bxvi, Here Kant famously compares his philosophy to a Copernican revolution. For a dual-aspect interpretation of this remark, see Henry Allison, “Kant’s Transcendental Humanism,” The Monist (1971), pages 182-206. 28 Gerold Prauss offers a dual-aspect reading of Kant’s use of the terms ‘things in themselves’ and ‘things as they exists in themselves.’ He argues that the frequent occurrence of the adverbial ‘things as they exists in themselves” in Kant’s work designates a special way of considering the very same objects of our experience. When Kant uses ‘thing in itself,’ Prauss further argues, it is only meant as an abbreviated form of the adverbial locution. See Gerols Prauss, Kant und das Problem der Dinge an Sich, Bonn (1974), and for a nice assessment of Prauss, see Karl Ameriks, “Recent Work on Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1 (January 1982).
BRAICH
14
of Kant’s methodology. In the “Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection,” Kant defines
transcendental reflection as:
The action through which I make the comparison of representations in general with the cognitive power in which they are situated, and through which I distinguish whether they are to be compared to one another as belonging to the pure understanding or to pure intuition.29
Such reflection establishes Kant’s epistemic procedure for distinguishing objects; what makes an
object an appearance rather than a thing in itself is, in other words, its relation to our cognitive
faculties, i.e., how we consider it. Just as we consider objects as appearances, standing in a
determinate relation to our cognitive faculties, so too can we consider those very same objects as
things in themselves, standing apart from those faculties. Moreover, that we consider objects in
this way does not commit us to the existence of non-spatial, atemporal, non-causal entities—and
this line of thinking finds an analogue in the sciences. As Allison points out, physicists
frequently consider bodies in abstraction from certain properties, such as weight, but this does
not show that weightless objects exist. Rather, it merely shows that bodies can be “conceived
although not experienced apart from their relation to other bodies.” 30 Thus, if we accept
Allison’s methodological approach to things in themselves, the problematic metaphysical theses
drop out, leaving us with only an epistemic procedure for distinguishing objects.
As this sketch of Allison’s interpretation suggests, his view emphasizes the negative role
things in themselves play in Kant’s philosophy, but does not account for the positive roles,
29 KrV, A261/B317. 30 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” pages 53-54. Allison acknowledges that this analogy cannot be pressed too far, since in the case of the sciences we are dealing with a determinate, empirical concept. Nevertheless, he argues, “the fact remains that the transcendental context does involve a genuine example of ‘considering’. Moreover, our ability to consider objects in this way is precisely what is meant by the claim that we can ‘think’ things as they are in themselves; while the unique features of the transcendental context is the fact that it involves an abstraction from everything empirical explains why we cannot know them as such.”
BRAICH
15
including, specifically, the role of affection. It should be made clear here that affection is not a
problem at the empirical level: insofar as the mind, considered as an empirical entity, can be
affected by other (empirical) objects via the senses, no difficulties arise for Kant. “Not only is it
the case that Kant can,” Allison writes, “but also that he does, talk about the mind as affected by
empirical objects.”31 Difficulties arise only when we are dealing with transcendental affection,
that is, the affection that holds between things in themselves and intuition. Allison, then, must
reconcile his negative formulation of what things in themselves are (or, perhaps more accurately,
are not) with Kant’s positive remarks about these things. Indeed, if things in themselves are
appearances considered in abstraction from our cognitive abilities, how can we account for
Kant’s (positive) assertion that they affect the mind?
Allison’s answer to this question is ingenious and swift. He argues that, as conceived
through transcendental reflection, the proposition ‘something affects the mind’ expresses a
purely formal, a priori condition of our having representations. Furthermore, we can substitute
‘something’ with ‘things in themselves’ without changing the cognitive value of the proposition:
for a thing in itself just is, by definition, that non-spatial, atemporal and hence purely intelligible
‘something’ that is said to affect the mind upon transcendental reflection.32 Consequently, the
proposition ‘things in themselves affect the mind’ does not express a synthetic truth about things
in themselves—that is, it does not yield knowledge that, as Kant articulates it, goes “beyond” the
concept—but rather states an analytic truth about how such a ground must be conceived.33
Nor does such a proposition introduce unknowable entities. As Allison argues,
transcendental reflection provides only a formal, a priori account of how we must conceive of
31 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 67. 32 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 68. 33 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 76.
BRAICH
16
affection in general; it does not, contra the metaphysical interpretation, specify a causal relation
that obtains outside of experience. Thus, when Kant says transcendentally that things in
themselves affect the mind, he is not speaking of a new set of entities, but is instead talking
generally about the familiar objects of experience considered in an abstract way. If we are asked
to explain at the transcendental level what that something of affection is, we can legitimately say
nothing more than this: it is something that cannot be described spatiotemporally, i.e., a thing in
itself. However, if we move down, as it were, to the empirical level, we can answer the question
in more substantive terms: light, particles, air, etc., these are the things that affect our minds. In
neither case, however, are we dealing with different objects. Rather, we are dealing with
numerically identical objects considered in different ways: one abstractly and the other
empirically. Allison, thus, writes that “the key to the Kantian response to this ‘objection of
objections’ must be the affirmation of the merely analytical nature of the claims involved, which
is itself a consequence of their purely formal, i.e., methodological, status.”34
Allison’s interpretation, then, renders claims (a) and (b) of the two-worlds view into the
following:
d) We can consider things in themselves at the transcendental level.
e) A thing considered at the transcendental level can be considered only as something
that affects the mind.35
Claim (d) reiterates the methodological nature of transcendental idealism. Unlike claim (a),
which states that things in themselves exist, claim (d) entails only that there are two ways of
considering the objects of experience, one of which requires abstracting away from our cognitive
powers. Claim (e) turns the statement ‘something affects our minds’ into an analytic truth about
34 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page74. 35 This schema is again barrowed from Langton, Kantian Humility, pages 8-9.
BRAICH
17
things in themselves.36 Consequently, the claim (b) that things in themselves cause appearances
is false. If things in themselves are identical with the class of empirical object, described in an
abstract, transcendental way, then they cannot cause appearances, for to say otherwise makes no
sense. The two-worlds view, thus, mistakenly construes the proposition ‘something affects our
minds’ as a synthetic, metaphysical thesis about things in themselves, when it is, according to
Allison, merely a methodological claim about how causal relations in general must be conceived.
Though perhaps more charitable than the two-worlds view, Allison’s interpretation first
encounters problems at the exegetical level. Under Allison’s analysis, all transcendental
propositions concerning affection express an analytic truth about the class of empirical objects
considered abstractly, as things in themselves. A consequence of this approach is that it leaves
no room for our ignorance of things in themselves, and hence it turns claim (c)—the claim that
we cannot cognize things in themselves—into the following tautology:
f) Things considered at the transcendental level just are things considered in abstraction
from their relation to our cognitive powers.
Such an approach to things in themselves is indeed difficult to reconcile with the text. If we
accept (f), then we must accept that the concept of a thing in itself contains no substantive
content beyond the negative predicates which transcendental reflection permits, i.e., that things
in themselves are non-spatial, atemporal and purely intelligible. However, Kant appears to hold
that, if our cognitive faculties were constituted otherwise, we could say more about things in
themselves. At A565/B593, for example, he writes that while we cannot know a thing in itself,
we can nevertheless think “it as a thing determinable by its distinguishing and inner predicates.”
The question, then, is: if things in themselves just are appearances considered abstractly, how
36 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 68.
BRAICH
18
and why would Kant think of them as possibly possessing distinguishing and inner predicates?37
Moreover, Kant frequently laments the fact that we cannot know such predicates. In the “Canon
of Pure Reason,” for example, he writes of our “unquenchable desire to find a firm footing
beyond all bounds of experience.”38 It is indeed difficult to see how this unquenchable desire
could be a desire to disprove the analytic (f).39 Could we desire, in other words, to show that
things considered at the transcendental level are not things considered abstractly? The problem
both passages highlight is, in short, a problem with analyticity. If Kant’s considered view is that
(f) exhausts all possible knowledge of things in themselves, then he would not be further
compelled to treat the concept of a thing in itself as if it contained content of which we cannot
know. But he does treat the concept this way, and this is no doubt a problem for Allison’s
interpretation.
To be sure, Allison’s interpretation is a rational reconstruction of Kant’s philosophy, and
as such, it need not square with everything the text says about things in themselves, but only
present a coherent account of transcendental idealism. Nevertheless, there are reasons for
questioning whether Allison’s is a coherent interpretation, and this is the second problem his
view encounters. In one sense, Allison’s account of transcendental affection succeeds; by
rendering claim (b) into claim (e), he shows that there is no longer the problem of non-spatial,
atemporal and unknowable entities affecting the mind. Though this strategy saves Kant from the
difficult task of explaining how things in themselves cause appearances, it does not eliminate the
problem of transcendental affection altogether. In the place of the old, metaphysical problem,
there is a new, methodological problem: though produced by transcendental reflection, claim (e)
37 Langton, Kantian Humility, pages 10-11. 38 KrV, A796/B824. 39 Langton, Kantian Humility, page 10.
BRAICH
19
still smuggles in a category of the understanding—something, in other words, is still affecting the
mind.40 At the end of his analysis, Allison addresses this problem: “This concept [affection]
does, indeed, involve a use of the categories, but the use is purely logical, defining how
something must be conceived in transcendental reflection.”41 This is a curious remark, since
transcendental reflection requires that we abstract away from space, time and all categories of the
understanding, including, of course, causality. There is a sense in which Allison, then, fails by
his own lights; he fails, that is, to abstract completely away from the categories when analyzing
transcendental affection. Consequently, while Allison’s interpretation accounts for roles (1) and
(3) of things in themselves, it does not provide an adequate account of (2), the role of affection.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, I have argued that neither Strawson’s nor Allison’s view accounts for every
role things in themselves play in Kant’s philosophy. Strawson’s interpretation accounts for (1)
and (2), but it does not meet (3), the role things in themselves play in Kant’s moral philosophy.
The source of this problem lies in Strawson’s attempt to eliminate things in themselves. By
turning Kant into a Berkeleian of sorts, Strawson obscures the central role the noumenal realm
plays in grounding the possibility of God, the soul and freedom. By contrast, Allison’s view
accounts for (1) and (3), but it does not meet (2), the role things in themselves play in
transcendental affection. The source of this problem is twofold. First, Allison’s attempt to turn
claims about things in themselves into analytic truths does not square with Kant’s talk of our
inability to know the inner predicates of these things. Second, his attempt to explain away the
problem of transcendental causality in terms of transcendental reflection fails, since engaging in
40 Langton, Kantian Humility, page 11. 41 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 76.
BRAICH
20
transcendental reflection is eo ipso engaging in the consideration of things abstractly, away from
space, time and the categories of the understanding.
The exegetical difficulties associated with transcendental idealism have consequently
forced commentators to assess the adequacy of each interpretation in light of extra-textual
consideration, e.g., charity. On these grounds, the dual-aspect view is preferable. Not only does
it avoid the metaphysical problems elicited by the two-worlds view, but it also captures the
overall epistemic concerns motivating Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Wood, for example, writes:
The identity interpretation [i.e. the dual-aspect view]…helps us to recognize the real nature of transcendental idealism, by presenting it metaphysically as a form of unremarkable realism, but one conjoined with the distinctive epistemological thesis that our knowledge is subject to limits.42
Though these kinds of considerations are virtually indispensable when deciding which version of
Kant’s doctrine to adopt, the fact still remains that the text underdetermines both the dual-aspect
view and the two-worlds view. Plainly stated, Kant formulates transcendental idealism in both
metaphysical and epistemological terms, resulting in the disparate roles things in themselves play
and, concomitantly, the current debate between Allison, Strawson and their respective traditions.
To undercut the debate, one may, then, ask: is transcendental idealism really a single, self-
consistent doctrine? Metaphysically speaking, it might be the case that it is not; it might, after
all, just be a set of incompatible doctrines. Though epistemically, it is nonetheless conceivable
that an alternative interpretation may come along and succeed where the two previous traditions
have failed. For methodological reasons, then, I think the proper question to ask is not whether
transcendental idealism is, in fact, a single, self-consistent doctrine, but rather whether we ought
to regard it as such. The answer to this question, I believe, should be in the affirmative: for
regardless of whether transcendental idealism actually is a unified doctrine, it is nevertheless
42 Wood, Kant, page 76.
BRAICH
21
helpful, perhaps as a regulative idea of Kantian exegesis, to think of it as if it were such a
doctrine.43
43 For their endless support and guidance, I thank the Philosophy Department at Lewis & Clark College. Specifically, I thank Rebecca Copenhaver and J.M. Fritzman, without whom this paper would still be somewhere in the noumenal realm.