KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University Editors: DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California. Berkeley GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University of Leyden WESLEY C. SALMON, University of Pittsburgh VOLUME 222 ROBERT HOWELL Department of Philosophy. State University of New York at Albany KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION An Analysis ofMain Themes in His Critical Philosophy SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging.in·Publication Data HOw ,}} . Rebert . Kant's t r anscendenta l d.duCtlen an analysIs ef Uln thellS In hIS crit Ical phIlosophy I by Rebert Hewell. p. ce . -- (Synthue lIbrary, v. 222) ISBN 978-90-481-4114-2 ISBN 978-94-015-8020-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8020-5 1. Knew ledge. Theory of. 2. Klnt. hunuel, 1724-1804- - ContrlbuTiens In theery ef knowledge . 1. T·lt le. II . Ser ies . B2799.I<7H68 1992 121 .• 092--dc20 91-43991 ISBN 978-904814114-2 Prinled on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrech Origin ally published by Kluwer Academic Publishen; in 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 No pan of the material prote<:ted by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. In Memory of My Mother and Father, Lorinda Katherine Cottingham Howell Robert Donald Howell Es ist miBlich, den Gedanken, der einem tiefdenkenden Manne obgeschwebt haben mag und den er sich selbst nicht recht klar machen konnte, zu erraten ... - Kant to Marcus Herz, May 26, 1789, discussing Leibniz Firm ground is not available ground. - A. R. Ammons TABLE OF CONTENTS DISPLAYED SENTENCES REFERRED TO FREQUENTLY xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv PREFACE xvii CHAPTER ONE: KANT'S PICTURE OF KNOWLEDGE 1 1. Kant's Goals 1 2. The Kantian Picture of Knowledge (I): Intuition, Concept, Sensibility, and Understanding 4 3. The Kantian Picture of Knowledge (II): Space, Time, and Transcendental Idealism 9 4. Summary 23 CHAPTER TWO: INTUITIONS AND THEIR OBJECTS 25 1. The Transcendental Deduction and Category Application 25 2. Kantian Representations in Our Knowledge: Things Existing in Themselves or Things Merely Appearing to Us in Time or Both? 26 3. The Object That Kant Takes an Intuition to Represent to Us: Things as They Appear and Appearances 36 4. A Problem for Kant 40 5. Outer and Inner Sense and the Problem for Kant 53 6. Things in Themselves: A Preliminary Comment 56 7. Summary 57 CHAPTER THREE: INTUITION, THE MANIFOLD OF INTUITION, AND ITS SYNTHESIS 59 1. Introduction 59 2. Our Discursive Thought-Consciousness and the Nature of a Kantian Concept 61 ix x TABLE OF CONTENTS 3. The Elements of the Manifold of Intuition (I): Matters for Concepts 70 4. The Elements of the Manifold of Intuition (II): Matters for Spatial Parts 80 5. Problems and Loose Ends 89 6. Conclusions 99 CHAPTER FOUR: THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION: ITS STRUCTURE, GOALS, AND OPENING CLAIMS 103 1. Introduction 103 2. 'Combination ... cannot be given' (B130) 105 3. 'How subjective conditions o/thought can have objective validity' (A89!B122): The Transcendental Deduction in Kant's Conception of It 111 4. The Overall Shape of the Transcendental Deduction; the A- and B-Deductions 124 5. Final Preliminaries. The § 14, A92-93!B 125-26 Argument for the Deduction 135 6. Summary 138 CHAPTER FIVE: COMBINATION AND INTENSIONALITY: B-DEDUCTION § 15 141 1. Introduction 141 2. Claims of B-Deduction § 15 141 3. Intensionality 144 4. The Assumption That H Knows through i 148 5. Summary 153 CHAPTER SIX: APPERCEPTION: B-DEDUCTION § 16 155 1. Introduction 155 2. Kant's View of Apperception in B-Deduction § 16 156 3. The Basic Structure of the § 16 Argument about Appercep- tion; the Problem of Validating Kant's Claim in § 16 159 4. Three Ultimately Inadequate Kantian Attempts to Validate Unity-of-Apperception Claims Like (S) 171 5. Can (S) Be Validated by Kant's Account of Synthesis? A Fourth Argument for (S) 184 6. Summary 189 TABLE OF CONTENTS xi CHAPTER SEVEN: TRANSCENDENTAL UNITY OF APPERCEPTION AND ITS NECESSITY 191 1. Introduction 191 2. Stipulating (S) and Unity of Apperception 192 3. Necessity of Unity of Apperception 199 4. Summary 211 CHAPTER EIGHT: THE UNION OF THE MANIFOLD OF INTUITION IN THE CONCEPT OF AN OBJECT: B-DEDUCTION § 17 213 1. Introduction 213 2. Uniting the Manifold of j 214 3. Preliminaries to B-Deduction § 17 220 4. B-Deduction § 17 and Kant's Attempts to Prove the Union of j' s Manifold in the Concept of an Object 225 5. The Union of the Manifold of j in the Concept of an Object as Yielding H Knowledge; Further Questions 233 6. Summary 243 CHAPTER NINE: OBJECTIVE UNITY OF APPERCEPTION AND THE LOGICAL FORMS OF JUDGMENT: B-DEDUCTION § 18 AND § 19 245 1. Introduction 245 2. Objective Unity of Apperception 246 3. Objective Unity of Apperception and the Logical Forms of Judgment 250 4. Questions about the Logical Functions 261 5. The Copula, Objective Unity, and Necessary Unity 265 6. Summary 272 CHAPTER TEN: CATEGORY APPLICATION TO THE OBJECT OF INTUITION: B-DEDUCTION § 20 275 1. Introduction 275 2. Kant on Concepts and the Logical Functions of Thought in Judgment 275 3. Concepts in Judgments and Features in Objects 279 4. Kant on the Categories (I) 289 5. Kant on the Categories (II): Further Development 296 xii TABLE OF CONTENTS 6. Kant on the Categories (ill): Aristotelian Explanations 303 7. Evaluations. The Necessity of Category Application 310 8. Final Issues 319 9. Conclusions. The Overall Interest and Success of the First Half of the B-Deduction 333 10. Summary 335 NOTES 339 BIBLIOGRAPHY 409 INDEX 415 DISPLA YED SENTENCES REFERRED TO FREQUENTLY 00 1~ (W) 161 (S) 161 actual-consciousness version of (S) 210 (NCA) 168 (NUA) 168 (N)) 201 (N2) 202 (N3) 203 (TJ) 217 (Ti) 220 xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In my references in this book to Kant's work, 'Ak. 3,45' refers to vol. 3, p. 45, of the Academy Edition of Kant's works. 'Schmidt, ed.' is Schmidt's edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, as cited in the Bibliography. For Kant and other authors, I use the translations noted in the Bibliography, sometimes with alterations. Translations not otherwise identified are my own. As is standard, 'A4/B8' refers to p. 4 of the first edition and to p. 8 of the second edition of the first Critique, as noted in the margins of most editions, including Kemp Smith's translation, from which (with some changes) I quote. References to Locke and Berkeley and to Hume's Treatise are by book, chapter, and section ('IVA.5'). Aristotle is cited by work, using the translations listed in the Bibliog­ raphy. 'McKeon, ed.' refers to The Basic Works of Aristotle (1941), cited in the Bibliography. Some parts of Chapters Two and Five through Eight are from two of my previous essays (1979 and 1981a, as noted in the Bibliography). I am grateful for permission to reuse the material. xv PREFACE The Critique of Pure Reason is one of the two or three supreme texts of Western philosophy and the most influential philosophical work of the last 250 years. The Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, in the Critique, is the central argument of Kant's theoretical work and underlies much subsequent philosophical investigation. The categories referred to are, according to Kant, the a priori concepts of our mind's faculty of understanding - concepts such as those of quantity, quality, substance, and cause and effect. The argument of the Transcendental Deduction answers a fundamental question of classical metaphysics and epistemol­ ogy: Can we know, through such categories, substantive facts about objects a priori, in independence of the evidence of our senses? As we will see in Chapter One, the opinion of rationalist metaphysicians was that we can. But the opposing empiricist tradition, culminating in the work of Hume, held that we cannot know facts about objects in such a way and, further, that concepts such as those of sub­ stance or of cause and effect are not a priori at all. In the Transcendental Deduction Kant tries to reconcile these two major positions and to settle once and for all the issue of the scope and limits of the categories. Kant argued earlier in the Critique of Pure Reason that we can know objects only as they appear to us through our senses and not as they exist in themselves, in independence of our sense experience of them. He argued also that concepts such as those of substance or of cause and effect are a priori. In the Transcendental Deduction he now attempts to show that the categories do indeed apply to, and yield us knowledge of, objects, but he denies that they yield us knowledge of objects as they exist in themselves. Kant thereby vindicates the rationalist view that a priori knowledge of objects through the categories is possible. But at the same time he also curbs rationalism and vindicates empiricism by insisting that we have such a priori knowledge only of the objects of our sense experience. In the Deduction, Kant's argument for his major conclusions is straightforward in its overall structure. Kant reasons, very roughly, that the mental representations, or intuitions, through which we know objects xvii xviii PREFACE in sense experience are subject to what he calls unity of apperception: We can take all those representations, and their contained elements, to belong to ourself.