Philosophy 190: Seminar on Kant
Spring, 2015
Prof. Peter Hadreas
Course website:
http://oucampus.sjsu.edu/people/peter.hadreas/courses/Ka
nt/index.html
Analogies of Experience
Postulates of Reason
&
Refutation of Idealism
Critique of Pure
Reason
Prefaces
Introduction
First Part
Trans.
Aesthetic
Transcendent
al Doctrine
of Elements
Second Part
Trans. Logic
Division Two:
Trans.
Dialectic
Division One:
Trans.
Analytic
Book I:
Analytic of
Concepts
Transcendent
al Method
Book II:
Analytic of
Principles
Introduction
Book I:
Concepts of
Pure Reason
Book II: The
dialectical
inferences of
pure reason
Kant’s
Refutation of
Idealism
CPR, pp. 326-329
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism
The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
“Idealism (I mean material idealism) is the theory that declares
the existence of objects in space outside us to be either merely
doubtful and indemonstrable, or else false and impossible; the
former is the problematic idealism of Descartes, who declares
only one empirical assertion (assertio), namely I am, to be
indubitable; the latter is the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley, who
declares space, together with all the things to which it is
attached as an inseparable condition, to be something
that is impossible in itself, and who therefore also declares
things in space to be merely imaginary. Dogmatic idealism is
unavoidable if one regards space as a property that is to pertain
to the things in themselves; for then it, along with everything for
which it serves as a condition, is a non-entity.”
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism
The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
“The ground for this idealism, however, has been undercut by
us in the Transcendental Aesthetic. Problematic idealism,
which does not assert anything about this, but rather professes
only our incapacity for proving an existence outside us from
our own by means of immediate experience, is rational and
appropriate for a thorough philosophical manner of thought,
allowing, namely, no decisive judgment until a sufficient proof
has been found. The proof that is demanded must therefore
establish that we have experience and not merely imagination
of outer things, which cannot be accomplished unless one can
prove that even our inner experience, undoubted by Descartes,
is possible only under the presupposition of outer experience. “
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism
The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
Theorem
“The mere, but empirically determined,
consciousness of my own existence proves the
existence of objects in space outside me.”
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism
The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
Proof
”I am conscious of my existence as determined in time. All
time-determination presupposes something persistent in
perception. This persistent thing, however, cannot be
something in me, since my own existence in time can first be
determined only through this persistent thing. Thus the
perception of this persistent thing is possible only through a
thing outside me and not through the mere representation of
a thing outside me. Consequently, the determination of my
existence in time is possible only by means of the existence of
actual things that I perceive outside myself.”
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism
The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
Proof
[continued from previous slide] “Now consciousness in time is
necessarily combined with the consciousness of the possibility of
this time-determination: Therefore it is also necessarily
combined with the existence of the things outside me, as the
condition of time-determination; i.e., the consciousness of my
own existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of
the existence of other things outside me.”
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism
The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
Note 1. One will realize that in the preceding proof the
game that idealism plays has with greater justice been
turned against it. Idealism assumed that the only
immediate experience is inner experience, and
that from that outer things could only be inferred, but,
as in any case in which one infers from given effects to
determinate causes, only unreliably, since the cause of
the representations that we perhaps falsely
ascribe to outer things can also lie in us. Yet here it is
proved that outer experience is really immediate, that
only by means of it is possible not, to be sure,
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism: The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
Note 1. [continued from previous slide] the
consciousness of our own existence, but its
determination in time, i.e., inner experience. Of course,
the representation I am, which expresses the
consciousness that can accompany all thinking, is that
which immediately includes the existence of a subject
in itself, but not yet any cognition of it, thus not
empirical cognition, i.e., experience; for to that there
belongs, besides the thought of something existing,
intuition, and in this case inner intuition, i.e., time, in
regard to which the subject must be determined, for
which outer objects are absolutely requisite, so that
and possible only through outer experience.
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism: The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
Note 2. All use of our faculty of cognition in experience for the
determination of time agrees with this completely. Not only can
we perceive all time-determination only through the change in
outer relations (motion) relative to that which persists in space
(e.g., the motion of the sun with regard to the objects on the
earth); we do not even have anything persistent on which we
could base the concept of a substance, as intuition, except
merely matter, and even this persistence is not drawn
from outer experience, but rather presupposed a priori as the
necessary condition of all time-determination, thus also as the
determination of inner sense in regard to our own existence
through the existence of outer things.
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism: The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
Note 2. [continued from previous slide] The consciousness of
myself in the representation I is no intuition at all, but a merely
intellectual representation of the self activity of a thinking
subject. And hence this I does not have the least predicate of
intuition that, as persistent, could serve as the correlate for
time-determination in inner sense, as, say, impenetrability in
matter, as empirical intuition, does.
Kant’s Refutation of Idealism: The text
CPR, pp. 326-329
Note 3. From the fact that the existence of outer objects is
required for the possibility of a determinate consciousness of
our self it does not follow that every intuitive representation of
outer things includes at the same time their existence, for that
may well be the mere effect of the imagination (in dreams as
well as in delusions); but this is possible merely through the
reproduction of previous outer perceptions, which, as has been
shown, are possible only through the actuality of outer objects.
Here it had to be proved only that inner experience in general is
possible only through outer experience in general. Whether this
or that putative experience is not mere imagination must be
ascertained according to its particular determinations and
through its coherence with the criteria of all actual experience.
William James on Sense of Self and
External World.
"In a sense, then, it may be truly said that, in one person at least, the "Self of
selves," when carefully examined, is found to consist mainly of the collection of
these peculiar motions in the head or between the head and throat. I do not for
a moment say that this is all it consists of, for I fully realize how desperately
hard is introspection in this field. But I feel quite sure that these cephalic
motions are the portions of my innermost activity of which I am most
distinctly aware. If the dim portions which I cannot yet define should prove to
be like unto these distinct portions in me, and I like other men, it would
follow that our entire feeling of spiritual activity, or what commonly passes by
that name, is really a feeling of bodily activities whose exact nature is by most
men overlooked.”1
1. William James writes in Principles of Psychology, in Great Books of the
Western World, Vol. 53, (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), p.
193-4.
Wittgenstein on Sense of Self in
Another’s Body
"If we had a sensation of toothache plus certain tactual and
kinaesthetic sensations usually characteristic of touching the
painful tooth and neighboring part of our face, and if these
sensations were accompanied by seeing my hand touch, and
move about on, the edge of my table, we should feel doubtful
whether to call this experience an experience of toothache in the
table or not. If, on the other hand, the tactual and kinesthetic
sensations described were correlated to the visual experience of
seeing my hand touch a tooth and other parts of the face of
another person, there is no doubt that I would call this
experience "toothache in another person's tooth".1
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein writes in the Blue Book: Wittgenstein, Ludwig, The
Blue and Brown Books, (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1958), p. 50:
Kant on
‘The
Analogies of
Experience’
The Truth of Time and
Space in Popular Culture
The eight-year-old Master (William Hughes)
stares into the Untempered Schism
In the sci-fi series Doctor Who an evil villain known only as
‘The Master’ is placed in front of the temporal schism. He sees
time for what it is loses his mind and plots against creation. In
"The Sound of Drums" (2007) and The End of Time (2009–
2010), a flashback shows the Master at the age of eight, during
a Time Lord initiation ceremony where he is taken before a
gap in the fabric of space and time known as the Untempered
Schism, from which one can see into the entire Vortex. The
Doctor states that looking into the time vortex causes some
Time Lords to go mad. 1
1. Adapted from text at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_%28Doctor_Who%29
Analogies of Experience
The three analogies correspond to the three
modes of time:
Permanence
Succession
Simultaneity
First Analogy
Second Analogy Third Analogy
First Analogy of Experience: Principle of
the Persistence of Substance
“Only through that which persists does existence in different
parts of the temporal series acquire a magnitude, which one
calls duration. For in mere sequence alone existence is always
disappearing and beginning, and never has the least magnitude.
Without that which persists there is therefore no temporal
relation. Now time cannot be perceived in itself; thus this
persisting thing in the appearances is the substratum of all timedetermination, consequently also the condition of the possibility
of all synthetic unity of perceptions, i.e., of experience, and in
this persisting thing all existence and all change in time can only
be regarded as a modus of the existence of that which lasts and
persists.” (p. 301) [continues]
First Analogy of Experience: Principle of
the Persistence of Substance
[continued from previous slide] “Therefore in all appearances
that which persists is the object itself, i.e., the substance
(phaenomenon), but everything that changes or that can change
belongs only to the way in which this substance or substances
exists, thus to their determinations.” (p. 301)
Second Analogy.
Principle of temporal
sequence according to
the law of causality.
Second Analogy of Experience:
Temporal Sequence According
the law of causality
“Thus, e.g., the apprehension of the manifold in the appearance
of a house that stands before me is successive. Now the question
is whether the manifold of this house itself is also successive,
which certainly no one will concede. Now, however, as soon as I
raise my concept of an object to transcendental significance, the
house is not a thing in itself at all but only an appearance, i.e., a
representation, the transcendental object of which is unknown;
therefore what do I understand by the question, how the
manifold may be combined in the appearance itself (which is yet
nothing in itself)?” (p. 306)
Second Analogy of Experience:
Causal Succession
“Since this is the case in all synthesis of apprehension, however,
as I have shown above in the case of the appearance of a house,
the apprehension of an occurrence is not yet thereby
distinguished from any other. Yet I also note that, if in the case
of an appearance that contains a happening I call the preceding
state of perception A and the following one B, then can only
follow A in apprehension, but the perception A cannot follow
but only precede B. E.g., I see a ship driven downstream. My
perception of its position downstream follows the perception of
its position upstream, and it is impossible that in the
apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be
perceived downstream and afterwards upstream.” (pp. 306-7)
[continues]
Second Analogy of Experience: Temporal
Sequence According the law of causality
[continued from previous slide] . . . “The order in the sequence
of the perceptions in apprehension is therefore here determined,
and the apprehension is bound to it. In the previous example of
a house my perceptions could have begun at its rooftop and
ended at the ground, but could also have begun below and
ended above; likewise I could have apprehended the manifold of
empirical intuition from the right or from the left. In the series
of these perceptions there was therefore no determinate order
that made it necessary when I had to begin in the apprehension
in order to combine the manifold empirically. But this rule is
always to be found in the perception of that which happens, and
it makes the order of perceptions that follow one another (in the
apprehension of this appearance) necessary.” (pp. 306-7)
Second Analogy of Experience: Temporal
Sequence According the law of causality
“This causality leads to the concept of action, this to the concept
of force, and thereby to the concept of substance. Since I will
not crowd my critical project, which concerns solely the sources
of synthetic a priori cognition, with analyses that address
merely the elucidation (not the amplification) of concepts, I
leave the detailed discussion of these concepts to a future system
of pure reason -especially since one can already find such an
analysis in rich measure even in the familiar textbooks of this
sort. Yet I cannot leave untouched the empirical criterion of a
substance,
insofar as it seems to manifest itself better and more readily
through action than through the persistence of the appearance.”
(p. 313)
Third Analogy.
Principle of simultaneity,
according to the law of
interaction, or
community.
Third Analogy.
Principle of simultaneity, according to
the law of interaction, or community.
“Things are simultaneous if in empirical intuition the
perception of one can follow the perception of the other
reciprocally (which in the temporal sequence of appearances, as
has been shown in the case of the second principle, cannot
happen). Thus I can direct my perception first to the moon and
subsequently to the earth, or, conversely, first to the earth and
then subsequently to the moon, and on this account, since the
perceptions of these objects can follow each other reciprocally, I
say that they exist simultaneously.” (p. 316)
Third Analogy.
Principle of simultaneity, according to
the law of interaction, or community.
“Things are simultaneous insofar as they exist at one and the
same time. But how does one cognize that they exist at one and
the same time? If the order in the synthesis of the apprehension
of this manifold is indifferent, i.e., if it can proceed from A
through B, C, and D to E, but also conversely from E to A. For
if they existed in time one after the other (in the order that
begins with A and ends at E), then it would be impossible to
begin the apprehension at the perception of E and proceed
backwards to A, since A would belong to past time, and thus can
no longer be an object of apprehension.”
(p. 317)
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“Because of his orientation on the non-original essence of time,
Kant is forced to deny all temporal character to ‘the principle of
contradiction.’ It would be contrary to sense to try to effect an
essential determination of primordial time itself with the aid of
what is derived from it. The ego cannot be conceived as
temporal, i. e., intra-temporal, precisely because the self
originally and in its innermost essence is time itself. Pure
sensibility (time) and pure reason are not only homogeneous,
they belong together in the unity of the same essence which
makes possible the finitude of human subjectivity in its
totality.”1
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 200-1
Heidegger: Kant
and the Problem
of Metaphysics1
Martin Heidegger
(1889 –1976)
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics, trans. Churchill, (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 200-1
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“It is at once obvious, therefore, that time as pure self-affection
is not found ‘in the mind’ ‘beside’ pure apperception. On the
contrary, as the basis of the possibility of selfhood, time is
already included in pure apperception and first enables the
mind to be what it is.
“The pure finite self has in itself a temporal character.
Therefore, if the ego, i.e., pure reason, is essentially temporal,
the fundamental determination which Kant provides for
transcendental apperception must first become intelligible
through this temporal character.”1
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 197
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“Time and the ‘I think’ are no longer opposed to one another as
unlike and incompatible; they are the same. Thanks to the
radicalism with which, in the laying of the foundation of
metaphysics, Kant for the first time subjected time and the ‘I
think,’ each taken separately, to a transcendental interpretation,
he succeeded in bringing them together in their primordial
identity — without, to be sure, having seen this identity
expressly as such.”
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 200-1
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“Can one still consider it to be of no importance that in
speaking of time and the ‘I think,’ Kant used the same essential
predicates?
In the transcendental deduction, the transcendental nature (i.e.,
that which makes transcendence possible) of the ego is thus
described: ‘The abiding and unchanging 'I' (pure apperception)
forms the correlate of all our representations.’ And in the
chapter on schematism wherein the transcendental essence of
time is brought to light, Kant says: ‘The existence of what is
transitory passes away in time but not time itself.’ And further
on: ‘Time . . . does not change.’
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 197.
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“Naturally, it could be objected that this coincidence of essential
predicates is not surprising, for Kant in making use of this
terminology intends only to assert that neither the ego nor time
is ‘in time.’ Certainly, but does it follow from this that the ego is
not temporal? Rather, is it not necessary to conclude that the
ego is so temporal that it is time itself and that only as such in
its very essence is it possible at all?”
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962), pp. 197-8.
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“What does it mean to say that the "abiding and unchanging 'I'
forms the correlate of all our representations"? First of all, that
the "abiding and unchanging" ego carries out the act of objectification, which act forms not only the relation of from-theself-toward . . . [Hin-zu-auf . . . ], but also the correlation of
back-to [the self], and as such constitutes the possibility of
opposition. But why does Kant assert that the "abiding and
unchanging" ego accomplishes [bilde] this act of objectification?
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 198.
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“Does he mean to emphasize that the ego is always found at the
basis of all mental events and "persists" as something
unaffected by the vicissitudes which characterize such events? .
. . But why does this supposed affirmation appear precisely
where it does — there where Kant delimits the finitude of the
ego, i.e., its act of ob-jectification? For the simple reason that
the permanence and immutability of the ego belong essentially
to this act.
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 198
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“The predicates "abiding" and "unchanging" are not ontic
assertions concerning the immutability of the ego but are
transcendental determinations. They signify that the ego is able
to form an horizon of identity only insofar as qua ego it proposes to itself in advance something on the order of permanence
and immutability. It is only within this horizon that an object is
capable of being experienced as remaining the same through
change. The "abiding" ego is so called because as the "I think,"
i.e., the "I represent," it pro-poses to itself the like of
subsistence and persistence. Qua ego, it forms the correlative of
subsistence in general.”
Heidegger: Kant and Problem
of Metaphysics
“ The provision of a pure aspect of the present in general is the
very essence of time as pure intuition. The description of the ego
as "abiding and unchanging" means that the ego in forming
time originally, i.e., as primordial time, constitutes the essence
of the act of ob-jectification and the horizon thereof.
Nothing has been decided, therefore, concerning the
atemporality and eternity of the ego. Indeed, the transcendental
problematic in general does not even raise this question. It is
only as a finite self, i.e., as long as it is temporal, that the ego is
"abiding and unchanging" in the transcendental sense.1
1. Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill,
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 199
Slides #1 and following, Portrait of Immanuel Kant in mid-life:
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/users/philosophy/courses/100/Kant003.jpg