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Kant's Transcendental Idealism As Empirical Realism Kant’s Transcendental Idealism as Empirical Realism By Lewis Edward Clarke Submitted for the degree of PhD at the University of East Anglia, Department of Philosophy August 2016 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract This thesis examines Kant’s transcendental idealism. It argues that the key to understanding Kant’s idealism lies in appreciating how it is compatible with Kant’s empirical realism. It suggests against the so-called traditional view that transcendental idealism is not a distinction between illusion and reality, where appearances are how things merely seem to be to us in virtue of the nature of our minds, and where things in themselves are understood to be how things really are. Instead, it argues that transcendental idealism, when charitably interpreted, reveals how minds such as ours can have genuine cognitive access to reality, based on exploring the links between the conditions of experience, in terms of a priori forms of intuition and categories that the cognitive subject supplies to its experience, and the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience, in terms of the necessary ontological structures that objects of experience must have in order to be representable through human forms of intuition (space and time). The thesis suggests that Kant uses his transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves in at least three ways and that unpacking these three uses helps us to get a better grasp on Kant’s idealism. The three senses of the transcendental distinction are: (1) the traditional phenomenalist conception, according to which appearances are ‘mere representations’ and things in themselves are the putatively ‘real’ things, (2) the notion that things in themselves are ‘objects of a pure understanding’ and (3) that appearances are conditioned phenomena while things in themselves are the unconditioned ground of phenomena. The thesis argues that senses (2) and (3) can be combined to yield transcendental idealism as empirical realism, while the arguments and passages that turn on sense (1) must be rejected. 2 Contents Note on Abbreviations and References 5 Introduction: Transcendental Idealism as Empirical Realism? 7 1. An Introduction to the Problem and Aims of the Thesis 7 2. The Structure of the Thesis 10 3. An Interpretative Puzzle and A Proposal: Understanding Kant’s Empirical Realism 15 1. ‘Original Orderability’: The Transcendental Deduction 26 Introduction 26 1. The Problem of the Transcendental Deduction: ‘Objective Validity’ and ‘Objective Reality’ 29 2. The Categories as Conditions of Thought: ‘Objective Validity’ 37 3. The Categories as Conditions of Perception and Experience: A Step towards ‘Objective Reality’ 48 3.1. The Second Step of the Deduction: §§21-26 49 3.2. §26: ‘Form of Intuition’ and ‘Formal Intuition’ 59 Conclusion: ‘Original Orderability’ 83 2. ‘Original Orderability’: The Analogies of Experience 87 Introduction 87 1. Restarting the Argument? The Place of the Analogies in the Transcendental Analytic 89 2. Kant’s Phenomenological Argument: The Analogies of Experience as Conditions of The Possibility of Experience 100 3. Kant’s Metaphysical Argument: The Analogies of Experience as Conditions of The Possibility of The Objects of Experience 110 Conclusion: ‘Original Orderability’ As Kant’s Answer to Hume 118 3. Kant’s Metaphysics and Epistemic Humility 121 Introduction 121 3 1. Transcendental Idealism and Metaphysics 123 1.1. The Role of the ‘Copernican’ Turn 123 1.2. Kant’s ‘Critical’ Conception of Metaphysics 140 2. ‘Things in Themselves’ As Objects of Pure Understanding 146 Conclusion: A Non-Distorting Idealism and Epistemic Humility 157 4. The Real as Ideal: Things in Themselves as the Unconditioned and the Transcendental Turn Revisited 159 Introduction 159 1. The Mathematical Antinomies: Methodological or Metaphysical Resolution?161 1.1. Transcendental Illusion and Resolving the Mathematical Antinomies 161 1.2. Kant’s Alternative Methodological Resolution 178 1.3. Objections and Responses 181 2. The Unconditioned in Things in Themselves 189 3. Transcendental Idealism as a Shift between Conceptions of Cognition 196 Conclusion: Transcendental Idealism as Empirical Realism 207 Appendix: Transcendental Idealism: A Contested Doctrine 213 Introduction 213 1. Appearance and Reality: Is Kant a Berkeleyan Phenomenalist? 214 1.1. Why Kant Might Be a Berkeleyan Phenomenalist 217 1.2. Why Kant Might Not Be a Berkeleyan Phenomenalist 229 2. Transcendental Idealism in One World 237 2.1. Appearances and Things in Themselves as Aspects of One World 238 2.2. Extrinsic and Intrinsic Natures of Things: Langton and Allais 241 3. Deflationary Accounts of Transcendental Idealism 253 Summary 260 Bibliography 262 4 Note on Abbreviations and References All references to the Critique of Pure Reason cite the standard A/B paginations and, unless otherwise stated, are to the Guyer-Wood Cambridge translation (1998). References to Kant’s other works employ the volume/page numbering of the Akademie Edition and refer to the relevant volumes of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. I employ the following abbreviations: Cor – Kant’s philosophical correspondence in Correspondence CPJ – Critique of the Power of Judgment CPR – Critique of Practical Reason in Practical Philosophy Dis – On a Discovery Whereby Any New Critique of Pure Reason Is to be Made Superfluous by an Older One in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 DS – Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Directions in Space in Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770 GM – Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals in Practical Philosophy ID – On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intellectual Worlds (Inaugural Dissertation) in Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770 JL – The Jäsche Logic in Lectures on Logic LM – Kant’s metaphysics lectures in Lectures on Metaphysics MFNS – Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 ND – A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Nova Dilucidatio) in Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770 NM – Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy in Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770 PE – Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (Prize Essay) in Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770 PM – The Employment in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, of which Sample I Contains the Physical Monadology in Theoretical Philosophy 1755- 1770 Pro – Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 5 R – Kant’s Reflexionen in Notes and Fragments, unless stated otherwise Full details of the translations used are provided in the bibliography. All other references are given parenthetically in the text and cite the date of publication. When referring to a portion of the Critique I use capitalization, so ‘Transcendental Deduction’ refers to that part of the Critique, while ‘transcendental deduction’ refers to either the argument or the project itself. I use single quotation marks for direct quotation and double quotation marks for indirect quotation. 6 Introduction: Transcendental Idealism as Empirical Realism? 1. An Introduction to the Problem and Aims of the Thesis Kant’s transcendental idealism is one of the most divisive topics in philosophical scholarship. The main question concerns how we should understand Kant’s transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves, and the corresponding limitation of our knowledge to appearances.1 Those such as Peter Strawson (1966), Paul Guyer (1987) and Kenneth Westphal (2004) understand transcendental idealism to be the negative thesis that we do not know how reality is (things in themselves), but only how it must seem to minds such as ours (appearances). Though it is not a position these philosophers endorse, they take Kant to have held this view, and they argue that there are strands of his thought that can be profitably separated from his much-maligned idealism.2 These philosophers can be termed ‘Kantian anti-idealists’. Others, such as Karl Ameriks, assign a less real status to appearances than to things in themselves, but nonetheless take appearances, for Kant, to be genuinely ‘non-fraudulent’ (2003: esp. 35-38; 2011). Ameriks could be described as occupying the middle-ground, or as he often calls it, the ‘moderate’ position. Then there are those such as Henry Allison (1983; 1996; 2004; 2012; 2015a; 2015b), Paul Abela (2002), Arthur Collins (1999) and Lucy Allais (2004; 2007; 2011; 2015) who argue, albeit in very different ways, that Kant is not a traditional idealist, trapping us behind a veil of perception, but a philosopher with profound insights into the way we gain cognitive access to reality. One of the key problems – maybe even the key problem – for understanding and evaluating Kant’s transcendental idealism as a philosophical position is how to work out an interpretation of this idealism that is compatible with what Kant terms his empirical realism, for as Abela notes, ‘Realism with a wink’ is the best description of how even Kant’s allies have viewed his supposed combination of 1 Throughout I often refer to Kant’s distinction
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