Kant lecture 5

But today, it’s the refutation of idealism. Now, I want to begin by saying that, since Kant saw fit—this is the really new contribution in the second edition—if many have argued that the first and second editions are really just tracking each other, the refutation of idealism is a new addition. It’s not only a new addition, but he takes time in the preface to the second edition to provide a gloss on just this section, which is pivotal. So, it’s a very important part of the argument. Since he takes the time to do this, can we agree at the outset that Kant is not an idealist? Because there’s a secondary literature that continues to charge him with one or another species of idealism. He certainly owns up to transcendental idealism, which I will get to, but there are learned treatises to the effect that Kant never really stopped being a Berkeleyan, et cetera, et cetera. So, if he’s an idealist, it is, as it were, over his dead body. And we’ll get to the sternness with which he disabuses himself of attributions of that kind, descriptions of that kind.

Well, last week, under the major question, which he takes to be the central problem of pure reason, namely, how a priori synthetic judgments are possible at all—if there were not a priori synthetic judgments, the path to skepticism would be direct, direct. It’s only in virtue of an argument that works to the effect that we are able to take the manifold of sensuous intuitions, all of these things that converge on the organs of sense and produce in us sensations, out of which appearances take place, and these come to represent something, come to represent something. This is our mode of receptivity; this is the basis upon which we have sensibility. The pure intuitions, space and time, must be there a priori for us to be receptive to events in the external world. So, this is going to give rise to sensibility, but until these sensuous intuitions are partitioned properly, subsumed properly under the pure categories, there is no understanding. So, by way of receptivity, we are able to perceive things, but it’s only by way of the categories that we are able to think things. Do you see? It’s what renders objects thinkable.

Now, how about deploying these sensuous resources correctly under the categories? Well, this is the task of spontaneity. It is guided by principles that he finally throws up his hands and refers to generically as “mother wit.” And so, we are left with this problem: since so much of this is done by way of a priori principles over which we certainly have no conscious control, does this not itself lead to a kind of skepticism and subjectivity? And the post-Kantian period is littered with treatises on the subjectivism inherent in Kant’s first Critique. So, suppose we take the position that the elements of cognition and the synthesizing that takes place are entirely of our own making, and that we can never get out of the box, we can never know things as they really are. And we’re right back to that claim in the Prolegomena that the embarrassment of philosophy is it still can’t establish the existence of an external world.

Now, we can begin this with Descartes’ famous method of doubt, and I will get to Descartes, but I think Locke is actually the gray eminence behind much of this discussion. Locke and Berkeley are the figures that Kant points to directly. In Book Two, Chapter Eight of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke treats us to his distinction between primary and secondary qualities. I want to read you some passages from that, because Kant knew his Locke and cites Locke frequently. This is from Book Two, Chapter Eight, Section Eight: “Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea; and the power to produce any idea in our mind, I call quality of the subject wherein that power is.” Just previously, in Section Seven: “Ideas in the mind are no more the likeness of something existing without us than the names that stand for them are the likeness of our ideas, which yet upon hearing they are apt to excite in us.” So, he’s declaring that the ideas have no more likeness to that of which they are ideas than the names we have for things are. The noun “glass” is like this, do you see?

Now, the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Qualities thus considered in bodies are, first, such as are utterly inseparable from the body in whatever state it be, and such as in all the alterations and changes it suffers, all the force can be used upon it, it constantly keeps. These are properties a body keeps under all conditions of alteration. Take a grain of wheat, he says, divide it into two parts, each part still has—here come the primary qualities—what does each part still have? Solidity, extension, figure, and mobility. Divide it again, it retains still the same qualities. These I call original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, namely the simple ideas of what? Solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. So, his young friend Newton need not worry. What the Newtonian world talks about, which is figure, extension, motion, and so forth, those are things to which we have, oddly, direct access. We see those things; we experience those things as they are. Secondary qualities of bodies, such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves but the power to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e., by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts, their corpuscular parts, do you see? And what comes under this heading? Colors, sound, taste, etc. These are secondary qualities.

Well, my goodness. So, when Thomas Reid looks at this, he refers to Locke’s position, and Descartes’ position, and Aristotle’s position, Berkeley’s position, everybody’s position, as, quote, “the ideal theory.” The ideal theory, Reid says, is a theory according to which we have no contact with the objects in the external world directly, but only by way of some mode of mental representation, such that the only thing we can talk about with any authority are the contents of our own minds and not the external world. And Reid says, early on in my philosophical career, I tended to side with Berkeley on these matters. Then, having stepped into a dirty kennel and banged my head frequently against a signpost, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that there really are objects in the external world, very much like what I see them to be, do you see? Locke and Descartes and company have generated something, Reid says, which, if true—this is a wonderful reading line—if the ideal theory is true, I lay my hands across my lips and become a skeptic. So, Reid is going to defend a direct realism against this account.

Kant is comparably agitated. Of course, when Kant gets agitated, you get the densest parts of the Critique of Pure Reason, and when Reid gets agitated, you get some wonderful prose, actually worth taking on a picnic. Do it, treat yourselves to it; it’s better than the Telegraph. Well, Kant sees two forms of skepticism arising from this tradition: the skepticism espoused by Descartes and that espoused by Berkeley. At B274, he identifies each of these clearly. What both have in common, says Kant, quote, “is the theory which declares the existence of objects in space outside us to be merely doubtful and indemonstrable or to be false and impossible.” The former is the problematic idealism of Descartes; the latter is the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley. Descartes worried that the whole damn thing might be a dream state; he’s not sure, he frets. And Berkeley, of course, declares the whole notion of an independently subsisting material world, a mind-independent material world, as simply impossible.

How many of you agree with Berkeley on that? I knew it, not one. All right, let’s do it then, just for a couple of minutes. So, you think that there is a mind-independent physical reality, physical reality, a material reality, you know, something that makes a sound when you hit it, has an odor, is visible, it’s yellow, it’s square. You think that if you were to strip what you regard as physical reality of all, in principle, sensible properties, there’d be something left over. What might that be? That is, something to which there is no attending sense or mind, something beheld by no consciousness anywhere, and nonetheless, you’re prepared with a kind of epistemic fundamentalism to say, notwithstanding to the contrary, that no mind in the imaginable cosmos apprehends any aspect of this entity, I declare without more, nonetheless, it exists. Oh, stop it! You should be ashamed of yourself.

So, Berkeley simply wants to, in the dialogue between Hylas and Philonous—the friend of reason, and Hylas is the materialist, you see—he simply wants to make clear to him that, look, don’t worry about this argument of mine; there are still carpets and bottles and computers and carrying cases and so forth. What there isn’t is a mind-independent, a totally mind-independent, independently existing material world. Rather, everything with real existence subsists in the attending mind, in some attending mind. Esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived. Wow. So, the tallest mountain didn’t exist till someone was there to perceive it? How about the backside of the moon before the Apollo program, et cetera, et cetera?

Now, Berkeley is a very able philosopher, optic specialist, world-class mathematician, so, again, he’s not the neighborhood nitwit. So, he understands questions of that sort, and on the general question, what is the ontological status of that which no human percipient has experienced or even could experience? If it is to be granted ontological status, it must be because it is held in some mind. And what Bishop Berkeley says, of course, it is eternally held in the mind that made it. Well, sorry about that; that’s your little Sunday sermon, no extra charge. So, he became a bishop fairly late, Bishop of Cloyne, and he wasn’t made a bishop because he was doing battle with, as he said, atheists and materialists, though I’m sure it helped. Well, Berkeley famously dissolved the distinction between Locke’s primary and secondary qualities on the grounds that all experience is mediated. Accordingly, he reached the conclusion that the notion of a mind-independent material world was simply incoherent. Thus, to be is to be perceived, and that’s the triumphant motto of Berkeley.

Berkeley decided that what we needed was a new kind of university. He came to America to raise money; he was going to build a college in Bermuda, and his first child was actually born in Rhode Island. And Berkeley had a house there; it’s a wonderful place if you ever get a chance to visit it, with a lot of Berkeley and little optical knickknacks and so forth. Yes, I’ve been and looked over the stuff, had a tour guide who was trying to tell me that Berkeley had an interest in optics, and I was very appreciative to learn that.

Now, consider Descartes’ conclusions, which he reaches in his Meditations. He knows from experience that the effects he feels are not willed by him. He says in the Third Meditation that he will feel heat whether he wants to or not, and he concludes from this that his sensations and ideas come to him from sources other than himself. So, he’s prepared to accept that much; this comes from a source other than himself. But then, dread skepticism promptly sets in, as we hear Descartes say, quote, “Although these apparently adventitious ideas do not depend on my will, it does not follow that they must come from things located outside me. There may be some other faculty, not yet fully known to me, which produces these ideas without any assistance from external things. This is, after all, just how I’ve always thought ideas are produced in me when I am dreaming.” So, he might be dreaming the whole thing, or they might be the gift of that evil demon, you see, which is going to corrupt his understandings and delude him into believing all sorts of things that are not so.

This is what the cogito is all about. He’s trying to find something to counter the evil demon’s efforts, you see, because even to be deceived, even if you grant the evil demon the ability to perpetrate illusory and impose delusional states, etc., just to deceive Descartes, Descartes must be a thinking thing. He declares himself to be, in addition to an extended thing, which is an inference, do you see? Can’t prove that part, but that he is a thinking thing, there is no doubt. Were he not a thinking thing, he couldn’t even cogitate the possibility of an extended thing. So, the cogito is—Reid, I think, was not entirely fair to Descartes, saying that a man who disbelieves his own existence is no more fit to be reasoned with than one who thinks he’s made of glass. Descartes didn’t set out on the cogito end of things because he disbelieved his own existence. The aim was not an ontological aim of establishing that he existed, but an epistemological aim: what kind of knowledge claim defeats a total skepticism? And one knowledge claim that defeats a total skepticism is the cogito, yes.

Okay, later in the same section—well, now, so far, things have been fairly tame. Now, enter Hume. Hume will illustrate the impoverishment of reason in relation to the knowable world and, in so many words, make clear that there can’t be synthetic propositions known to be true a priori. Hume dismisses the whole thing this way: “Suppose a person, though endowed with the strongest faculties of reason and reflection, to be brought on a sudden into this world, he would, indeed, immediately observe a continual succession of objects and one event following another, but he would not be able to discover anything farther. He would not, at first, by any reasoning, be able to reach the idea of cause and effect, since the particular powers by which all natural operations are performed never appear to the senses. Such a person, without more experience, could never employ his conjecture or reasoning concerning any matter of fact or be assured of anything beyond what was immediately present to his memory and his senses.” Later in the same section, quote, “By what argument can it be proved that the perceptions of the mind must be caused by external objects and could not arise either from the energy of the mind itself or from some other cause still more unknown to us? It is acknowledged that, in fact, many of these perceptions arise not from anything external, as in dreams, madness, and other diseases. It’s a question of fact whether the perceptions of the senses be produced by external objects, but here, experience is, and must be, entirely silent. The mind has never anything present to it but perceptions and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connection with objects. The supposition of such a connection is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning.”

You went over to that, didn’t you? Hume’s marvelous. Do you know, when he’d go to France, he was such a wonderful conversationalist, they couldn’t—particularly the brilliant women of the French salons would always want to chat up Hume. I have great affection for him, notwithstanding my disagreement with his philosophy. First, we share a similar profile, relatively rare in the annals of philosophy. The svelte Frenchman, you know, if they do all that swordplay, I can’t imagine Hume doing anything like that. But the svelte Frenchman, envious of the attention Hume would be getting, would stand in the corner, and they’d point to corpulent Hume chatting up all the ladies, and they would say, “And the Word was made flesh,” haha.

But, you see, the state that Hume leaves our reasoning and our experiences in—they simply can’t establish, in addition to my perceptions, the fact of an external world bringing these about. This is not within the ambit of reason’s powers, and, of course, it can’t be established by experience because all experience is supplying are just those perceptions. Well, if Kant is going to reply to challenges of this sort, he might find himself moving into a kind of idealism, because, after all, at the level of the sensuous intuitions, we’re talking about representations. No one has access directly to noumenal reality, to things as in themselves they really are.

So, Kant understands that the charges, after the first Critique’s first edition, the charge that his argument is itself a species of idealism, has to be dealt with. He says, look, there’s a term I do accept. I accept—I qualify myself as a transcendental idealist. And then he says this at A369: “By transcendental idealism, I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only the sensible forms of our intuition, not the conditions of objects viewed as things in themselves.” So, he’s again making the distinction between phenomena and noumena.

Now, why this wall constantly being built, lest anyone think we have access to things as in themselves they really are? Do you see how that will lead to an undefeatable skepticism? If you claim that the contents of your consciousness just are things as in themselves they really are, then you live in a world exhausted by ideas, because that’s what the contents of consciousness are. So, there would be no distinction whatever between an actual external world and the conscious representation of that world, because, in consciousness, it wouldn’t be a representation; it would be things as in themselves they really are. So, Kant is aware of the fact that, once you argue for access to noumenal reality, ironically, you’ve bought into a skepticism that probably is more severe than even Berkeley’s, Hume’s, and Descartes’.

My notes say: after all, if there were no distinction possible between noumena and phenomena, between an entity as in itself it really is and the representation of that entity, it would be Berkeley’s idealism that probably would be the last word. Now, that the external world is in fact represented does raise a question as to what has to be in place for there to be representations in the first instance. All perceptual representations are spatio-temporal, and as neither space nor time is given in the array of impinging stimuli, we get back to the transcendental aesthetics. So, we know that, for perception itself, there must be a priori a framework such that the organs that grant us sensibility package the input in a characteristic way, package it in a way that the stimuli themselves can’t convey. Time is not in the stimulus; space is not in the stimulus.

Now, remember, knowledge in Kant is technically used: for there to be knowledge, there must be both sensibility and understanding. So, what cannot in principle enter into experience cannot in principle be known. He states clearly how his use of transcendental is to be understood with respect to transcendental idealism as it extends its influence. This is a quote: “Not every kind of knowledge a priori should be called transcendental, but only that by which we know that—and know how—certain representations can be employed or are possible purely a priori.” So, again, he wants “transcendental” understood as an enabling condition, a necessary state of affairs if something else is to take place. If there is to be experience, necessarily there must be what? There must be a mode of sensibility, etc. If there is to be understanding, there must be a categorical framework in which the products of experience are properly deployed and organized.

But, of course, if appearances are the only source of the contents of perception, we find ourselves embracing some sort of Berkeleyan idealism. In Part Two of the Prolegomena, at 36 and following, he does leave himself open to such an interpretation. Here’s Kant sounding very much like an idealist, and I don’t mean a transcendental idealist. He declares that nature, in the material sense, is known, quote, “by means of the constitution of our sensibility, according to which it is in its own way affected by objects which are themselves unknown to it and totally distinct from the appearances.” Well, this begins to sound somewhat Berkeleyan, and you can see why his critics would charge him with idealism and charge him with a kind of psychologism, since this begins to sound—well, it’s not quite as arid as cognitive psychology. I don’t think anything is quite that arid, but it does begin to sound a bit like Cognitive Psychology 101. We’ve got schematic drawings of the senses leading to short-term memory, going to long-term memory, going to the amygdala, and generating that sort of thing. If he were alive today, he might be tempted to draw things like that because of his passion for categorizing.

Well, he’s got to refute the idealisms of Descartes and Berkeley and show that transcendental idealism has nothing in common with those, and that’s the task of the refutation of idealism. It’s a dense argument, to say the least. It has given rise to a vast secondary literature; it’s so vast that even I’ve contributed to it—don’t worry about it—and tried to save Kant from the charge that there are gaps in his argument. And I have a recent article titled “Kant’s Seamless Refutation of Idealism.” How confident am I in the conclusions I’ve reached? Not a bit.

How does one know? The core question is how best to explain Kant’s thesis: how do we explain the startling agreement between the perceptual-cognitive representations that are granted and the things external to ourselves? Or, as I’ve said a couple of times in these lectures, how do we explain getting to the moon and back? Do you see? This is not just some sort of reasonable correlation between guesses we have as to the external world and what the external world maybe is somewhat like. This is an extraordinary journey from Earth to Moon and back, based on calculations and equations and rocketry and radar and so forth. So, you might say, in quasi-Kantian terms, since we did that, what are the necessary preconditions? What’s the transcendental argument according to which you can go to the moon and come back? And the transcendental argument is: there must be a fundamental and objective agreement between the pure concepts of the understanding, as we have subsumed the data of sense under these categories, and the validity of our representations of the external world that match. If it weren’t valid, the achievements would be unimaginable.

That’s saying that we’ve done it, and that something must be there for us to have done it. But how do we establish the reality of things outside ourselves in the first instance? Suppose the whole space program is a kind of dream. There are still people who think that the whole thing was done on a Hollywood sound lot, you know, that nobody actually ever did go to the moon. There are people who believe things like that. Well, to establish the reality of things outside ourselves, Kant says he will turn idealism—all idealisms—against themselves. And he sets out to establish that the very possibility of self-awareness, Descartes’ or Berkeley’s own inner sense, requires an awareness of the external world. That is to say, it is only by way of what is also aus uns—it is only by way of our access to what is outside ourselves that we are able to establish that inner life of conscious experience. That’s what he means by turning idealisms against themselves.

As he says at B274, he says that inner sense requires an awareness by way of outer sense. Now, the argument, as it’s developed, finds Kant saying this—listen carefully now, it’s dense: “One is conscious of one’s existence as determined in time.” You’re conscious of your existence as determined in time. But all determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception. Now, “determined” here is the translation of the German bestimmt, and the German has a very wide extension. It is used to refer to establishing something as certain or as definite, to set something, to fit something in place, to render something firm, as in “polite but firm,” do you say “determined”? Probably wouldn’t have been the word I would have chosen. I would say: one is conscious of one’s existence as set or fixed in time. One is conscious of one’s existence as fixed in time, but all this presupposes something permanent in perception. That is, look, a parade of successive states of consciousness presupposes something static in relation to which other items are time-varying. It’s the stationary nature of this or of the room, of the spatial framework, against which—look, things vary in time, do you say?

So, time variation presupposes a static background or a permanent background. That permanent background is provided by the pure intuition of space. So, absent the spatial framework, you could not have that sequence of events in inner space, which just is the march of conscious events. The permanent can’t be within the conscious percipient, for that very consciousness, for its own successive states to exist, requires something permanent that is external to itself. Only through perception of an objective thing outside myself can I be conscious of an enduring self possessed of successive inner states. Kant concludes that self-consciousness requires perceptual awareness of objects external to oneself. This is the counter to an idealist claim that the mind has direct access only to its own internal states and processes, do you see?

If what the idealist is claiming is that all of my epistemic claims are tied to the parade of experiences in my own mind—contents of consciousness—to establish that that very parade, that very conscious life, that very possessed set of interstate experiences, cannot exist except insofar as there is a permanent external world constituting the background for it. There could, in principle, be an idealized mind, but it could not be anyone’s, for it would lack the conditions necessary for self-consciousness. And this is so because self-consciousness requires conditions whereby the mind’s own operations can be determined in time. You’ll see this much more clearly when we get to the question of the unity of our perception and Kant on the self.

Now, Kant is clear on this when he says, for in what we entitle “soul,” namely myself as an appearance of inner sense, everything is in continual flux, and there is nothing abiding except—if we may so express ourselves—the “I,” he says this at A381. But this “I” is but an intellectualized subject term, something of an indexical that merely locates the place of the continuing flux. So, what does he conclude? He says at B275, this is in the refutation of idealism section, he says: “Mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.” It’s from the fact that I have a conscious inner life that there must be an external reality that constitutes the framework of permanence, absent which there could not be the successive, time-determined life of the mind.

Well, there’s still a hint of subjectivism here, and it’s only when we return to Kant’s treatment of the pure intuitions that this unwanted subjectivity gives way to what is a priori, universal, and necessary. He says this as early as B2: “We shall understand by a priori knowledge, not knowledge independent of this or that experience, but knowledge absolutely independent of all experience. Opposed to it is empirical knowledge, which is knowledge possible only a posteriori, that is, only by way of experience. But experience never confers on its judgments true or strict universality. If, then, a judgment is thought with strict universality, that is, in such a manner that no exception is allowed as possible, then it is not derived from experience, but is valid absolutely a priori.” And he takes his argument against idealism to reach that degree of necessity and universality, do you see?

This time-determined internal life of the mind is not unique to Jack or Jill. These constitute the necessary conditions for there to be successive states of mind as such—necessary and universal, therefore not the gift of experience. So, in the end, is Kant some sort of idealist? This is a question that has spawned a substantial secondary literature. I can tell you, as far as I can tell, no end in sight. As long as PhDs require dissertations, there will be additional work on Kant as an idealist, I’m sure, and then other work on Kant is not an idealist, and probably two or three hundred on Kant could be an idealist under a certain set of descriptions, etc. Well, if he is an idealist, then it’s over his own explicit objections. He was at pains to trace the rationale that would find, as he put it, even, quote, “good Berkeley degrading bodies to mere illusion,” close quote. And Kant, like Reid, would have none of that. That’s it.