But at
the same time Kant thought he was vindicating both a scientific realism,
where science really knows the world, and a moral realism, where there
is
objective moral obligation, for both of which a connection to external
existence is essential.
This is probably true to some extent. A better Kant scholar than I should
remark.
But, one should keep in mind that Kant's critical ideality precluded him
from
the nihilism/existentialism (?) that a materialist perspective would have
permitted him.
Sorry if I used any words wrong there.
And there were also terribly important features of things-in-themselves
that
we do have some notion about and that are of fundamental importance to
human
life, not just morality but what he called the three "Ideas" of reason:
God, freedom, and immortality.
Well, "ideas of reason" are not features of noumena.
Kant was responding to Hume by keeping focused on necessity. His
analytical
philosophy was based on a structured examination of syllogistic reasoning,
"In what precise modes the pure concepts of reason
come under these three headings of all transcendental
ideas will be fully explained in the next chapter. They
follow the guiding thread of the categories. For pure
reason never relates directly to objects, but to the
concepts which understanding frames in regard to
objects. Similarly, it is only by the process of completing
our argument that it can be shown how reason, simply
by the synthetic employment of that very function of
which it makes use in categorical syllogisms, is
necessarily brought to the concept of the absolute
unity of the thinking subject, how the logical procedure
used in hypothetical syllogisms leads to the idea of
the completely unconditioned in a series of given
conditions, and finally how the mere form of the
disjunctive syllogism must necessarily involve the
highest concept of reason, that of a being of all
beings--a thought which, at first sight, seems utterly
paradoxical.
"No objective deduction, such as we have been
able to give of the categories, is, strictly speaking,
possible in the case of these transcendental ideas."
Well, let's see....
There is grace and there is determinism.
There is belief and there is singularity.
There is a soul and there is a consumer.
Take your pick.
What Kant is really doing with ideas of reason is a lot like "first-order"
and
"second-order" in logic.
He writes:
"Now the transcendental concept of reason is
directed always solely towards the absolute totality
in the synthesis of conditions, and never terminates
save in what is absolutely, that is, in all relations,
unconditioned. For pure reason leaves everything
to the understanding--the understanding [alone]
applying immediately to the objects of intuition, or
rather to their synthesis in the imagination. Reason
concerns itself exclusively with absolute totality in
the employment of the concepts of the understanding,
and endeavors to carry the synthetic unity, which
is thought in the category, up to the completely
unconditioned. We may call this unity of appearances
the unity of reason, and that expressed by the category
the unity of understanding. Reason accordingly occupies
itself solely with the employment of the understanding,
not indeed in so far as the latter contains the ground
of possible experience (for the concept of the absolute
totality of conditions is not applicable in any experience,
since no experience is unconditioned [Really, try to find
a copy of Seligman's paper, "Perspectives in Situation
Theory" to how this expresses such a deep contrast
between 'philosophers in an armchair' with 'the real
world' -- mitch]), but solely in order to prescribe to the
understanding its direction towards a certain unity of
which it has itself no concept, and in such manner as
to unite all the acts of the understanding, in respect of
every object, into an absolute whole. The objective
employment of the pure concepts of reason is, therefore,
always transcendent, while that of the pure concepts
of the understanding must, in accordance with their
nature, and inasmuch as their application is solely to
possible experience, be always immanent."
What use are experts when they have no sense of accuracy? Where in any of
this
are the ideas of reason described as "features"?
Kant always believed that the rational
structure of the mind reflected the rational structure of the world,
even of
things-in-themselves -- that the "operating system" of the processor, by
modern analogy, matched the operating system of reality.
One might say that Kant had *faith* that the totality and unity
encompassed by
the concept of necessary existence was not dishonest.
On the other hand, one might observe that Kant was not influenced by
Neo-Kantianism and did not even see the issue, as stated, to be relevant.
I would bet on the latter possibility.
But Kant had no real argument for this -- the "Ideas" of reason just
become
"postulates" of morality -- and his system leaves it as something
unprovable. The paradoxes of Kant's efforts to reconcile his conflicting
approaches and requirements made it very difficult for most later
philosophers to take the overall system seriously.
http://www.friesian.com/kant.htm
Hegel took it seriously,
"Thought must itself investigate its own capacity of
knowledge. People in the present day have got
over Kant and his philosophy: everybody wants
to get further. But there are two ways of going
further--a backward and a forward. The light of
criticism soon shows that many of our modern
essays in philosophy are mere repetitions of the
old metaphysical method, an endless and uncritical
thinking in a groove determined by the natural
bent of each man's mind."
Heidegger also took it seriously,
"In the sixties (1860's) Mills "Logic" was known
far and wide. The possibility of an investigation
into the structure of the particular sciences offered
the prospect of an autonomous task for philosophy
while at the same time preserving the inherent rights
of the particular sciences. This task recalled Kant's
"Critique of Pure Reason," which itself was interpreted
as an exercise in the philosophy of science. The
return to Kant, the renewal of Kantian philosophy,
the founding of Neo-Kantianism all take place from
a particular line of questioning, that of philosophy of
science. This is a narrow conception of Kant which
we only now are again trying to overcome."
The real issue is much simpler than the excerpt wants to admit: Kant is
hard.
I will re-iterate that the "postulates" of morality goes back to the fact
that
Kant was not a materialist. Without the rigor of the deduction in
"Critique of
Pure Reason," his further pursuit of these issues would probably appear
unfounded. I am not personally familiar with the larger scope of his
philosophy; so it is quite possible that he slips back into dialectical
illusion
that is deserving of such casual criticism. But that is for someone other
than
me to clarify.
There is one thing I should note. Hegel applies the same criticism to
Kant's
use of the categories as, say, "undefined" and "primitive." As part of
his
attempt to "extend the philosophic Idea" he combines Fichte's deduction of
the
categories with some of Kant's critical philosophy. Since I have
knowledge of
the facts here, I concede Hegel's criticism, although I am uncertain of
his
larger plan since it begins with an outright declaration of metaphysical
intent. More to read, I guess.
-------------------------------------
Kant locates the order of nature in reason. Reason does for the
understanding what understanding does for the manifold of intuition -
"the
understanding is an object for reason, just as sensibility is for the
understanding." Reason's regulative capacity renders the unconditioned
totality of objects systematic. There are three ideas of reason: self,
world
and God. God is the Ideal of Reason, whose concept
aims . . . at complete determination in accordance with a priori rules.
Accordingly it thinks for itself an object which it regards as being
completely determinable in accordance with princi ples,
that is, in accordance with universal a priori cognition. This ideal of
the
ens realissimum, of the universal concept of a reality in general, is
then
thought of as containing the being of all beings. But as an idea of
reason,
the ens realissimum is never met with in appearances. The Ideal of
Reason
does not satisfy the transcendental conditions and so cannot be
considered
objectively real. As such, Kant holds that the existence of God cannot
be
proved by speculative reason.
Kant argues that there are three, and only three, possible ways in which
speculative reason can argue for the existence of God, characterized as
the
Ideal of Reason. But all fail to prove God's existence. Reason,
according to
Kant's analysis, can attempt to prove God's existence by either an
empirical
or a transcendental path, both of which involve going beyond the scope
of
reason to the transcendental concept. Consequently, Kant first discusses
the
transcendental proof of God's existence, arguing that the other proofs
ultimately depend on it. The ontological argument moves from idea to
existence, arguing that the essence of a supreme and perfect being
involves
existence. Kant argues that this type of proof fails to recognize that
existence is not a predicate, and that to call it so is to claim that
there
is a quality in the world corresponding to it.
...In his two earlier works, Kant asks the question 'How is the realm of
possibility possible?', whereas in the Critique the question of
possibility
has become an epistemological problem rather than an ontological one.
The
problem is now seen in terms of a structure of conditions related to the
possibility of cognition, not as a problem requiring the proof of a
single
actual ground. Kant's argument that existence is not a predicate is
given
new force by his transcendental analysis, which shows that God's
existence
is not an issue in the realm of reason. If the transcendental analysis
is
accepted, and we therefore see that all existential propositions are
synthetic, we cannot, without contradiction, maintain that existence is
a
predicate.
...Kant's rejection of all possible proofs of God's existence and his
moving
God out of the sphere of ontology, rules out the traditional ground of a
systematic universe. He therefore must provide some other explanation of
how
we perceive the world as systematic and purposive.26 Some principle of
systematicity is necessary to account for the interconnectedness or
coherence we perceive in nature. Kant explains systematicity in terms of
epistemology. For Kant, systematicity is the creative organization of
our
cognition of nature in accordance with certain regulative principles.
These
principles are the ideas of reason. Reason prescribes a logical
principle
that assists
the understanding by means of ideas, in those cases in which the
understanding cannot by itself establish rules, and at the same time ...
give[s] to the numerous and diverse rules of the understanding unity or
system under a single principle.
At the level of the understanding there is no system. An idea, as a
regulative principle, supplies a rule for systematization. Kant
distinguishes this from the 'Ideal of Reason', which supplies the notion
of
an 'archetype' or individual ground for systematization.28 This too must
be
seen as only regulative, as it has no content, that is, 'God' does not
correspond to the concept of God. It is the regulative ideal of nature
that
makes possible the unity of nature itself. The Ideal of nature, as
regulative, has a purely methodological status.
Kant moves from systematicity to purposiveness. He argues that saying
that
all things are part of a system is tantamount to saying that all things
have
a purpose within that system. To see things as systematic, for Kant, is
to
see them as in "seemingly purposive arrangements." A move cannot be made
from purposive order to God, because God has no matter of intuition,
that
is, God is not 'given' to sensibility and so does not conform to the
transcendental conditions. But there is an analogical correspondence
between
systematicity and God. They are logically equivalent and "it must be a
matter of complete indifference to us, when we say we perceive . . .
unity,
whether we say that God in his wisdom has willed it to be so, or that
nature
has wisely arranged it thus." From a philosophical point of view, God as
creator corresponds to system. The principle of God is not needed to
explain
nature. All that is needed is the principle of systematicity. Analogy
between teleology and theology gives meaning or content to our idea of
God.
But to designate what the relationship is between God and the world in
itself is completely outside the conditions of possible experience.
In the Critique, it no longer makes sense to ask whether natural laws
form a
systematic whole. The ideal of reason is simply the principle of
systematic
unity. This unity has no ontological significance, since it does not
exist
empirically. Rather it is "a mere fiction," or "a mere illusion," with
"no
object that can be met in any experience." When we act according to the
principle of systematicity, we presuppose that nature is a completed
system.
Despite this status, Kant claims that we need the idea of systematic
unity,
that we "must" assume it. This is, in Kant's eyes, the strongest
possible
argument for God - not for the existence of God in the constitutive or
formal sense, as no such proof is possible, but for the meaningfulness
of
the idea of God in the cognitive sphere.
IMMORTALIST:
[Therefore it takes time to systematize cognitively?]
The time-determination of apperception establishes a certain connectivity
of
concepts. Specifically, there is a manifold of intuition giving material
sensation under the pure a priori forms of sensibility, space and time.
This
synthesis of apprehension accounts for a succession of connected
representations
whose coherent individuating principle is governed by the phrase, "in so
far as
it is contained in a single moment."
From this, you get the notion of "predictive coherence" [from Seligman's
paper]. In Kant's words,
"Every intuition contains in itself a manifold which
can be represented as a manifold only in so far as
the mind distinguishes the time in the sequence of
one impression upon another;"
So the very notion of object (as in "nature is the complex of all the
objects of
experience") depends on the time-determination (as in "we do not know
nature but
as the totality of appearances, i.e., of representations in us, and hence
we can
only derive the laws of its connection from the principles of its
connection in
us, that is, from the conditions of their necessary union in
consciousness,
which constitutes the possibility of experience.")
Kant distinguishes the manifold of intuition from the manifold consequent
to the
synthesis of apprehension (the time-determination) by saying that while
both are
manifolds, the first has no representation as a manifold contained in a
single
representation.
Just for kicks, think about the contrast between the well-described
topology of
general relativity under the spacetime metric and the probablistic/fuzzy
specification of topologies constituting the quantum foam preceding the
Plank
time.
Given all of that, the opening passage discussing schematism begins with:
"In all subsumptions of an object under a concept
the representation of the object must be *homogeneous*
with the concept; in other words, the concept must
contain something which is represented in the object
that is to be subsumed under it. This in fact is what is
meant by the expression 'an object contained under a
concept.' Thus, the empirical concept of a plate is
homogeneous with the pure geometrical concept of
a circle. The roundness which is thought in the latter
can be intuited in the former."
The key word here is "homogeneous" because this is the sense in which an
object
"coheres" across moments. In Seligman's paper, you get a "perspectival
domain"
and a sequence of "situations." The "perspective shifts" associated with
the
sequence of "situations" are associated with the mathematical relation of
inclusion (the essential issue is "one-to-one" and the concept of
inclusion is
the category-theoretic [toposes specifically] analogue to model-theoretic
concept of formal identity). Seligman uses this to define an "object"
relative
to a sequence of "subobjects."
Returning to Kant, he gives an example:
"When for instance, by apprehension of the manifold
of a house I make the empirical intuition of it into a
perception, the necessary unity of space and of outer
sensible intuition in general lies at the basis of my
apprehension, and I draw as it were the outline of
the house in conformity with this synthetic unity of
the manifold in space. But if I abstract from the form
of space, this same synthetic unity has its seat in the
understanding, and is the category of the synthesis of
the homogeneous in an intuition in general, that is,
the cat
