Chapter 1: the Conception of Things in Themselves in the Critical Philosophy: Exegetical Issues

Chapter 1: The Conception of Things in Themselves in the Critical Philosophy: Exegetical Issues

Introduction

Within recent years Immanuel Kant's conceptionof things in themselves has been at the center of a highly contentious debate regarding the proper meaning and import of Kant's transcendental idealism, that is, what, properly speaking, transcendental idealism is, or what it amounts to. Henry Allison made this point in a relatively recent article entitled “Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism” (which was largely devoted to this very issue), when he says that “The debate regarding the interpretation of Kant's idealism is usually seen as turning on the best way to understand his transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves.”[1] What this suggests is that one cannot advance an interpretation of Kantian transcendental idealism without first advancing an interpretation of the transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves (TD), since how one interprets the former is a direct result of how one interprets the latter. That is, how one interprets Kant's TD directly governs how one understands the fundamental character of Kantian transcendentalism. So, in light of the centrality of the TD to the controversy surrounding Kant's transcendental idealism as a whole, it is not surprising that one of the aims of this thesis is to come to terms with that very issue, of how best to understand the idea of things in themselves within the context of Kant's theoretical philosophy. Not only is this far from an easy task to begin with, but it is compounded by the fact that, since there is obviously no consensus on exactly what Kant meant with his formulation of the TD, or on exactly what the TD ultimately amounts to, multiple schools of thought have arisen for the sole purpose of tackling that very issue. With this basic understanding that there is no easy answer to the question of what exactly Kant intended his formulation of the TD to mean, it becomes clear that, as we attempt to arrive at the heart of what the TD really consists in, we must first come to grips with exactly what these various exegetical schools of thought have to say about the TD, of how it must be understood within the broader context of Kantian transcendentalism: for it is only then that will we be in a position to sufficiently address the concerns, textual as well as systematic, that have arisen in reference to the particular Kantian concept under consideration.

As I noted, there are many different interpretations of the precise meaning of Kant's TD, ranging (as we will see) from straightforward ontological interpretations which paint Kant as a traditional, Berkeleian metaphysician for whom the external, mind-independent world is nothing over and above a series of our mental representations, to more revolutionary[2] interpretations which see Kant not as an “honest-to-goodness, old fashioned” idealist who doubts the existence of the external world, but rather as a bona fide direct realist for whom there really are external objects – in this case, appearances, not things in themselves – which causally “affect” us in a straightforwardly empiricist sense. Each of these interpretations will therefore be dealt with in the forthcoming stages of this thesis; it must also be noted here that common-sense suggests that they cannot carry an equal amount of exegetical weight, either in regards to their textual consistency or in regards to their architectonic plausibility for that matter, and the most important implication this has for our purposes is that we will eventually have to decide which readings, if any, do justice to the fundamental import and significance of Kantian transcendentalism. Moreover, since there is obviously no conceivable way I can establish exactly what the TD amounts to within the context of Kantianism proper in a vacuum, as it were, independent of the various exegetical schools of thought which have as their concern the TD, as I see it, the simplest way of dealing with the exegetical issues related to Kant's TD is simply to pose the all-important question: is there a reading of the TD that fits the texts, and remains true to the more fundamental philosophical concerns of Kantianism in general? This question will no doubt form the basis of the first part of my thesis, which is concerned with finding, within contemporary philosophical studies on Kant, a primafacie plausible reading of the TD.

This chapter will consist of three parts. In part 1, I will introduce the two conceptions at the heart of Kant's doctrine of the TD, appearances and things in themselves, with particular emphasis on the latter. In part 2, I will introduce the various interpretations of Kantian idealism in relation to the TD, each of which will then (in part 3) be considered in relation to the texts.

Part 1: An Introduction to Kant's Conceptions of Appearances and Things in Themselves

As I indicated above, in the first part of this chapter I will introduce, by way of explication, the two central Kantian concepts at the heart of the aforecited question, which we saw forms the basis of our critical and exegetical evaluation of the meaning and import of Kant's TD. The concepts to which I here refer are nothing other than appearances and things in themselves. So, to that end, we should now consider these two concepts within the Critical context of transcendental idealism itself.

Early on in the “Transcendental Aesthetic” at A20/B34 Kant provides us with a definition of the notion of appearances (Erscheinungen), or rather “things that appear,” one of the most important conceptions of his entire “Critical” framework, in terms of the idea of a spatio-temporal object of an empirical intuition; simply put, appearances, in other words, can best be understood as things or objects as we experience them under the a priori conditions of a possible experience. As we come to learn in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), an appearance is something that conforms to the formal-categorial structure of a possible experience, which essentially means two things: in the first place, it means that appearances are objects that conform to the basic a priori forms of space and time, or to put it differently, appearances are spatio-temporal objects; secondly, it means that appearances are objects that are made intelligible by means of the most basic concepts of our human understanding, the categories, which is to say that they are objects that can be made sense of in terms of such concepts as unity, plurality, reality, negation, and the like. Another way of putting this is by saying that Kant takes the concept of appearances to signify nothing over and above the ordinary empirical constituents of our shared, spatio-temporal reality, with the result that appearances can include, on the one hand, such mundane spatio-temporal items such as tables, chairs, and computers, that is, items with which we are all intimately familiar, but it also means that they can include such things as atoms, neurons, and supernovas, for instance, items of modern scientific discovery with which we are not so intimately familiar. In the end, what is important for our purposes is that, because appearances conform to both the subjective a priori forms of our empirical intuition, as well as to the most basic a priori (and thus once again subjective) categories of our understanding, appearances are obviously things that factor into our knowledge-claims about the state of reality, and it is for that reason that we can say of them that they are things that are ultimately cognizable by us. Crudely put, the concept of appearances is the concept of things that we can know.

Additionally, one must remember that, beginning at A22/B37 of CPR, Kant draws a distinction between inner sense on one hand, and outer sense on the other, each of which becomes associated with its own corresponding form of empirical intuition; the form of time becomes associated with inner sense, whereas the form of space becomes associated with the form of outer sense. Kant asserts that,

By means of outer sense, a property of our mind, we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all without exception in space. In space, their shape, magnitude, and relation to one another are determined or determinable. Inner sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself or its inner state, yields indeed no intuition of the soul itself as an object; but there is nevertheless a determinate form [namely time] in which alone the intuition of inner states is possible, and everything which belongs to inner determinations is therefore represented in relations of time. Time cannot be outwardly intuited, any more than space can be intuited as something in us.[3]

Laying aside the fact that this distinction will soon prove to be crucial in the following chapter, for our present purposes what this implies is that spatio-temporal appearances include, among other things, inner, and therefore wholly mind-dependent, mental items, the contents of which form the basis of our most complex thoughts and emotions, aswell as outer, wholly material, items like computers, cell-phones, and cars, for instance. The reason this is important is because this is where Kant first begins to distance himself from Berkeley or a Berkeleian-type phenomenalism, the latter being a metaphysical and epistemological position which doubts the existence of anything and everything that is not immediately perceived or perceivable by us. And, as we will come to learn in the next chapter, many accounts of the TD will suffer for just that reason: they fail to account for this fundamental distinction between inner and outer sense, which, as we just saw, plays an important role in Kant's account of the nature of appearances.

There is no doubt that, in comparison with Kant's account of the conception of appearances, which we have already considered in some detail, his account of the conception of things in themselves (Dinge an Sich) is much more complex and nuanced. To begin with, as we will shortly see, we cannot even say with absolute certainty that things in themselves actually exist, that is, that there really is something, to be exact, a non-spatial, atemporal, and non-categorial form of being to which the concept of the thing in itself refers. Nevertheless, we can say with a considerable degree of certainty that the concept of things in themselves (or things as they are in themselves) is, very generally, the concept of something, let us say once again, a form of being, that exists completely apart from, independent of, and without any reference to, our experience, and the consequent result is that things in themselves thereby essentially become understandable in terms of a form of being that fails to conform to any of the a priori subjective conditions of a possible experience. More specifically, things in themselves refer to a form of being that exists outside the empirical realm of spatio-temporal reality, and for that very reason they denote a form of being to which the a priori forms of space and time cannot apply; furthermore, they cannot be subsumed under, conform to, or in any sense be rendered intelligible by means of, the subjective a priori categories of our understanding such as substance/attribute, cause and effect, unity, and reality, naming a few. The important point is that, by virtue of the status of things in themselves as prima facie mind-independent items of some mysterious non-spatial, atemporal, and non-categorial sort, the concept of things in themselves is the concept of a thing that is fundamentally unknowable to us; simply put, if things in themselves were to exist, they would be so different from anything we have ever experienced (or for that matter, could ever experience) that we would not be in a position to know anything about them.

Despite the fact that we are in no position to make any substantive pronouncements about the precise meaning of the TD, of what it amounts to and how it can best be understood in light of Kantian idealism proper, one can nevertheless see key themes emerging in many contemporary accounts of the TD, particularly with respect to Kant's doctrine of things in themselves. Let's be clear, though: I am certainly not saying that all of these themes or theses are entirely unobjectionable; in fact, we will shortly see that some contemporary Kantian interpreters reject the very first and most basic thesis, the thesis that things in themselves actually exist, that is, that the concept of such things refers to something that really exists. However, what I am saying is that most Kantian interpreters attempt to do justice to these theses in some way. Even though we have already touched upon most of them, it is certainly important at this stage to make them as clear and explicit as possible. To that end, then, I have provided a list of them, viz., a list of what many take to be the four essential features or elements of Kant's commitment to the conception of things as they are in themselves, which can be encapsulated in terms of the following four theses, and which I have entitled the existential thesis, the non-formal, non-categorialthesis, the discursivity thesis, and finally, the inscrutability thesis, respectively.

Things in themselves exist [See CPR, Bxx].
Things in themselves are necessarily non-spatial, atemporal things of some kind, which cannot be understood in terms of the pure a priori concepts of the understanding (i.e., the categories) [See CPR, A30/B45 and A39/B56].
Human cognition is discursive, meaning that it requires both sensible intuitions, as well as concepts [See CPR, A51-52/B75-76].
(From 1, 2, and 3) Things in themselves cannot be known by us [See CPR, Bxxvi, A30/B45, and A44/B61].[4]

To be sure, the first two theses are metaphysical in character and import, whereas the final two are epistemological, where the conclusion logically follows the combination of the first three theses. In the end, all I want the reader to take from this philosophical outline at this point is that, once we combine the fact that things in themselves supposedly exist in some metaphysically-robust sense of term, with the additional facts that they can be neither formal nor categorial – as both the a priori forms of intuition as well as the pure a priori categories of our understanding apply only to objects of sense that are immediately given to us – and that our knowledge is discursive in that it requires both sensible particulars as well as general concepts, it follows that things in themselves are things of a fundamentally inscrutable sort.

However, there are of course fundamental problems with the above account, the first of which centers round the conclusion, the inscrutability thesis, according to which things in themselves represent a form of being of which we cannot obtain any determinate knowledge. For, so the argument goes, if things in themselves were genuinely inscrutable to us, common-sense says that we certainly could not know that they exist, and we certainly could not know that they exist in such a way that they do not conform to either the a priori forms of our empirical intuition or to the pure a priori categories of thought. Another way of putting this point is to claim that, insofar as one accepts the veracity of the conclusion above, one thereby rejects the veracity of both premises 1 and 2, for one might ask: on what grounds can we claim that things in themselves exist, and exist in some non-formal, non-categorial way, moreover, if we cannot even claim to have any determinate knowledge of such things in the first place?

Now, at least in my mind, there are some relatively simple ways of rebutting this criticism, where the most common is to claim that it is only synthetic claims about things in themselves that Kant rejects as illegitimate, which essentially means that we are free to make as many analytic claims about the status and/or character of things in themselves as their concept warrants. The implication here is that, notwithstanding claim 1, which says that things in themselves exist, all of the aforementioned claims listed above, meaning claims 2 and 3, as well as the conclusion 4, are wholly legitimate because they express merely analytic truths about the status and/or character of things in themselves. With this understanding that many of the above theses can be derived purely from the concept of things as they are in themselves as such, some Kantian scholars have sought to dispel the worry noted above by effectively claiming that, since the concept of things in themselves is nothing more than the concept of a non-spatio-temporal, non-categorial object of some sort, to claim that we cannot obtain any determinate knowledge of things in themselves is to state a merely analytic truth about such things. Now, while I agree with this line of argument as far as it goes, the problem becomes compounded once we take into account the second major issue in respect to the above account, which is in a very important respect a more forceful expression of our current problem.

A far more serious critical issue arises, however, when we recall that things in themselves are supposed to be things that lie wholly beyond the categories of our thought, that is, the a priori, and therefore most fundamental, concepts of the human understanding by means of which the external, mind-independent world is made intelligible to us. According to Graham Priest,[5] one of the implications of the Kantian theory that the categories can only be employed within the field of a possible experience, and can therefore only be applied to objects within that field (viz., phenomena), is not just that we cannot know things in themselves (or noumena) – what Priest refers to as being beyond the limit of cognition – but more importantly, and more controversially, that neither can we make meaningful statements about things in themselves nor form coherent thoughts (or ideas) of such things – in this latter sense, things in themselves are beyond both the limit of expression as well as the limit of conception.[6] In order to adequately understand the rationale behind Priest's view that we can neither say anything meaningful about, nor even form coherent thoughts (or ideas) of, Kant's notion of things in themselves (or noumena), we must first explore exactly why he thinks we cannot know them. As we can see here, there is a close connection between the way in which things in themselves are beyond the limit of our cognition on one hand, and the way in which they are both beyond the limit of expression as well as the limit of conception on the other hand.