On the Peculiar Fate

Throughout this last reading selection from the Prolegomena, Kant makes reference to what in the A preface to the first critique is referred to as the “peculiar fate” of human reason. Kant holds that human reason is by its inherent design, fated to ask questions to which it can never know the answer. It is because of the bounds of human reason that all prior attempts at a metaphysics as a science have failed, and it is for this same reason (pun very much intended) that metaphysics as a science must attempt and ultimately fail to reach that which is beyond experience. Further, it is also because of the nature of human reason that we can never know anything about “things in themselves” or come any sort of conclusive answer when engaging in the dialectical. One good example of this from the reading is in the fourth paragraph of section 57, where Kant says, “We cannot indeed, beyond all possible experience, form a definite notion of what things in themselves may be. Yet we are not at liberty to abstain entirely from inquiring into them; for experience never satisfies reason fully, but in answering questions, refers us further and further back, and leaves us dissatisfied with regard to their complete solution.”

Having come to the conclusion and solution sections of Kant’s Prolegomena, one might easily draw detailed comparisons between Kant’s organization of philosophical inquiry into metaphysics and that of some earlier philosophers, notably Aristotle (albeit a topic best left for another blog post), but in my opinion it is the notion of the peculiar fate of human reason that makes Kant stand out from all those before him. While Kant and Aristotle may break down the external universe and internal cognitive functions similarly, Aristotle (and other predecessors in the same philosophical line) presents it as the definitive answer to these fundamental questions of the universe. Kant, however, seems to be resigned to an unending struggle with these questions, a struggle with which any philosophy major can relate. When Kant says, “that the human mind will ever give up metaphysical researches is as little to be expected as that we should prefer to give up breathing altogether, to avoid inhaling impure air,” there is a certain poetic beauty to Kant’s language that echoes with the philosopher in all of us. As Kant explains, Metaphysics, unlike Mathematics and Natural Science, has bounds but not limits, and thus does not have the same degree of finality to its conclusions. However, one might argue that this inconclusiveness makes Metaphysics that much more beautiful and intriguing than those areas of inquiry that do not attempt to reach beyond themselves, nor beyond experience.

Soul and Nature

The soul is the thinking self. It exists in the sphere of reason and thus is part of those cognitions and perception that cannot be proven through experience. However, also, it differs from the rest of those propositions in the sense that it is an empty, inconsequential (as in does not a serve as a basis for future propositions and the build up of further ideas) concept merely in itself. Drawing from this idea, Kant proves that the soul cannot be proven to continue to exist after death. The persistence (continuation) of a thing can be proven through experience, thus it needs to be a cognition of understanding. Because the cognitions of reason can only be refuted on a purely logical basis, through the subjective investigation of reason itself (§42). Yet if the soul is accepted and treated as a substance, it can no longer even contend to be in the realm of reason, firstly, and secondly to the possibility of existing beyond death, in the place where there is no longer any experience. This leads to the conclusion that soul’s continuation through life can be proven and only barely, but not after death, as we have no experience past then (at least, perhaps, not in the realm of understanding), and, ironically enough, that is the only part of the persistence of the soul that any of us care to prove or consider (§48). This leads us to the same monumental problem of Descartes, kind of. We cannot be creatures of the two realms simultaneously and exist in both. Why do we posit a soul’s existence at all instead of mere reason if we cannot differentiate the two in any significant and meaningful way?

On a different note, the idea of natural law makes an appearance in this part once again. The natural law is now permanent and unchangeable. In the discussion of necessity and human freedom, the natural stays constant regardless of the rational forces acting upon or within it. While the main discussion is on the concept of freedom and the antimony related to it, the role of nature is significant here. Freedom itself stems from nature in the sense that it is able to act from rationality and only in reference to a specific object. However, freedom is also curtailed by nature because nature sets limits to the actions that a rational being can perform. The idea of constant laws of nature enters here is that when it comes down to it, while the rational being might be acting rationally or not or from a rational basis and sound analysis and examination of the situation or not, the nature itself is unchanged and mostly uninfluenced by those actions – its law are definitely not.

Change in the texts from Hegel's Phenomenology

Preparing the PDF file of the Preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit to be posted on Blackboard, I realized that the Preface is much longer than I had remembered and that the intention to read and discuss it in a single week was ambitious, but perhaps unrealistic.

So I made a change and selected the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit as the text we will read during the second week of March (the 7th and 9th), which is what I think I had originally selected back when I was writing the syllabus in early January. 

I have posted Terry Pinkard's free unpublished translation of both of these selections, as well as the selection from the section entitled "Spirit" and the entire text for that matter. Obviously you will want to download the Introduction, but you may also want to consult the other selections and the entire text itself. 

All course schedules have been amended to reflect these changes. I apologize for the confusion.

... the peculiar fate (the A Preface from the first Critique)

How Is Metaphysics In General Possible?

Unlike concepts of nature, metaphysics is concerned with concepts that necessarily cannot be given in experience, and therefore may not be falsified or confirmed through experience. Metaphysics must be concerned with reason itself. The concepts of the understanding differ from the concepts reason in that the former’s use is “immanent”, referring only to subjective experiences, while the concepts of reason extend to the universe of possible experiences, exceeding particular experiences and becoming “transcendent”. The concepts of reason are divided into three types: psychological, cosmological, and theological. These three concepts make up all of metaphysics.
1.) Psychological Ideas
“Pure reason demands that for each predicate of a thing we should seek its appropriate subject, but for this subject which is in turn necessarily only a predicate, we should seek its subject again, and so forth to infinity” (§46). From this it follows that we may never be able to attain a final subject. The substantial itself can never be thought; it is inconceivable. All the properties we use to cognize bodies must be effects of a lacking subject. We are unable to conceive a property other than as an effect of a force. This mode of thinking is responsible for the formulation of the “soul hypothesis”. There is thinking, so we assume there must be an underlying “thinker” to do the thinking. “For the I is not a concept at all, but only a designation of the object of inner sense insofar as we do not further cognize it through any predicate” (§46). The thinking self may be called substance, but if it is not proven to be persistent, the concept is empty and therefore useless. Persistence of the thinking self (soul) may be proven only in experience (when it obviously persists), but never after death (which is often the main concern).
2.) Cosmological Ideas
The cosmological idea “always finds its object only in the sensible world and needs no other world than that whose object is an object of the senses, and so, thus far, is immanent and not transcendent” (§50). None of the cosmological claims can be verified in experience because these ideas expand the conditioned with its condition making them impossible to be adequately experienced. There are four of these transcendent ideas, each containing two seemingly contradictory assertions which are each equally plausible through pure reason. The cosmological ideas (presented under §51) are as follows:

1. Thesis: The world has, as to time and space, a beginning (a boundary).
Antithesis: The world is, as to time and space, infinite.

2. Thesis: Everything in the world is constituted out of the simple.
Antithesis: There is nothing simple, but everything is composite.

3. Thesis: There exists in the world causes through freedom.
Antithesis: There is no freedom, but everything is nature.

4. Thesis: In the series of causes in the world there is a necessary being. Antithesis: There is nothing necessary in this series but in it everything is contingent.

What Kant calls “the strangest phenomenon of human reason” is that, when we think of appearances as things in themselves, which is most often the case, an “unexpected conflict comes to light” when we realize that both the theses and antitheses may be proven true. Reason seems to contradict itself. Each of these antinomies result from a misunderstanding according to Kant. The error made in #1 is considering space and time as things in themselves. As Kant has already established, space and time are merely intuitions, or forms of our understanding. Space and time do not exist outside of experience. The error made in #2 is in considering composite things and the parts they are made of as things which may be cognized outside of experience, which is impossible. In #3, it is a mistake to believe that causal necessity and freedom are contradictory. Causal necessity and freedom may both exist, because they refer to different things. The laws of nature, as Kant has established, refer only to appearances in space and time. The concept of freedom lies outside causality, so it can not exist in experience, and consequently it applies only to things in themselves. It is this same type of error which contributes to what seems like a contradiction in #4. Causal connections may be contingent in appearance, but the underlying things in themselves may have necessary connections.
3.) Theological Idea
This last idea is the ideal of pure reason. This is the idea of a supremely perfect first being (God). Kant believes any proof of this being is impossible, and therefore the efforts of any philosopher to attempt this feat were useless.


It seems to me that Kant takes the distinction between appearances and things in themselves a little to far in certain respects. Certainly these two types of things are different, but are they not at all constrained to one another? How is it that the appearance of something may be contingent but the thing in itself necessary. If all the things in themselves were necessary, how could the appearances be contingent? Could the appearances fluctuate while the things in themselves are stable? If it were the case that the appearances do not directly, necessarily correspond to the state of the thing in itself, there would have to be another factor at work here, it would not be merely an appearance of the thing in itself. Appearances certainly seem to be contingent, but if things in themselves were necessary, appearances would be as well, but then again both may be contingent. I believe that for an appearance to be an appearance of a thing in itself, it must directly correspond to the thing in itself, that is, not necessarily to resemble the thing in itself, but that for each thing in itself there is a single necessary appearance for it.

Metaphysics as a Science

Kant’s purpose in the Prolegomena is to explain how Metaphysics as a science is possible. By definition, metaphysics explains the fundamental nature of being and the world. In order to understand metaphysics as a science we need to know the difference between these two terms: categories and ideas. The categories are pure concepts of understanding and the ideas are pure concept of reason. Metaphysics become subjective when everyone gives their own nature of reasoning. However, due to transcendental reasoning metaphysics become objectively possible because it includes the absolute totality of all possible experience. Metaphysics is based upon “synthetic propositions a priori”. The objects of experience have the relations of subsistence, causality, and community. The pure concept of understanding is result of experience. In the same way, transcendent concepts of reason cannot be confirmed by experience because they do not exist in mere appearances. Therefore, in order to know the pure concepts of understanding and pure concept of reasoning we need to be in the boundary of limitation of experience. According to Kant, we cannot know things as they are in themselves. Before, Kant metaphysics went beyond the boundaries of limitations of experience. Kant supports the fact that we cannot know the “things as they are in themselves”. And it is not about “a thing as it appears to us”. According to previous philosophers like Descartes claim that the soul is indivisible and therefore it is immortal substance. Then, Kant makes it clear that to enlighten about the soul as an indivisible, immortal substance is to explain about a “thing as it is in itself”. They are things in it which cannot be known directly but they are pure concepts of understanding which are derived from our experiences.

Knowledge depends on experience, therefore the limits of reason is based on experience. If our reason goes beyond its own limits, it will become dogmatic. For Kant, dogmatic statements are those statements that are accepted as true even though they go beyond the limitation of experience. Therefore we need to concise ourselves in the boundaries of limitations. Metaphysics itself is the critique of pure reason in relation to a priori knowledge. It is the basic foundation of science because science itself seeks for pure reasoning. The reason of nature must stay within the boundary of appearances. However, the reason of appearances wants to go beyond the appearances in order to recognize the source of appearances.

How is Nature itself possible?

Essentially, what Kant talks about here is two ways in which the idea of nature can be approached: we can feel the nature and/or understand it. Nature operates and manifests itself through events (cause and effect) that are bound by law. Law is intrinsic to nature. In everyday life people seem to accept the notion that since nature operates by its own laws, it’s something out there, permanently existing across space and time. The notion “if/when I die, the world will keep running” is prevalent. It’s interesting to think about it, but I think most of the people don’t realize the obvious link between the world of nature, that seems so separate and foreign, and us human beings. So what Kant implies, according to my interpretation, is that nature, separate from mechanisms of our sensibility and reasoning just doesn’t make sense. Knower cognizes known. Known, which are events and processes that we can call nature seems separate from the knower and operate according to its rules and laws, but take the knower out of the picture and the known loses its meaning. Moreover, I think what Kant is saying is that the principles (sensibility and reasoning) by which we know nature also belong to nature itself – they are nature’s some of many laws. “The possibility of experience in general is thus at the same time the universal law of nature, and the principles of the former are themselves the laws of the latter”.
Then there are universal laws of nature, which according to Kant’s proposition can be known without experience. The universal laws of nature (known) lie in our ability to perceive and understand (knower). Then we hit a brick wall, because you can’t go any further by saying that instruments by which we know nature are part of that nature, we can cognize these instruments. The problem is to cognize them we need the very same instruments.

Hume’s lack of proof, provides the premise for Kant’s Proof

In further trying to affirm his work on transcendental philosophy, Kant “reiterates” the notion how one “can dispose thoroughly of the Humean doubt” (p.62). Hume’s doubt, skepticism, or uncertainty in regard to the concept of causality implies that through reason, and reason alone, an individual can not conclude that one event (cause) brings about another event (effect). Instead Hume asserts that the concept of causality is no more than an occurrence of unconnected events, transpiring within their own distinct times. It is only through habit that the mind perceives, and believes that cause and effect have a causal connection. For example in pool, we assume that by hitting the white ball (cause) at the black ball, it will consequently bring the effect of the black ball going into a specified direction (effect).

Kant praises Hume for hinting on the impossibility of there being an existing connection between cause and effect. Although, just as quickly, Kant turns around and reduces Hume’s work as nothing short of worthless because Hume did not proceed in searching for answers explaining why reason itself, cannot determine a relationship within the concept of causality (par. 10-11)? The question that arose while reading the section § 27 of Prolegomena, is why Kant insisted on reverting to undermining Hume when he (Kant) has already spoken and undermined Hume’s claims and skepticisms in the Preface of the Prolegomena? The answer to this question thereby, becomes the premise of this exposition: to assert that no matter how much a proposition is able legitimize itself within the underlying principles of metaphysics which give breadth to pure reason; in order to expand on existing propositions, one must revert to old ones, including those that could not withstand the critique of reason.

Kant examines Hume’s skepticism and empiricist stance, on cause and effect, concluding that Hume’s claim are insufficient due to its lack of thoroughness. Instead, Kant builds off of that insufficiency, and navigates avenues unknown, that Hume did not bother to travel or find. In the process, and to the end result, Kant ultimately proves “wrong” the belief that empirical propositions form the basis of our innate knowledge. In opposition and in contrast to Hume’s empirical propositions, Kant not only proves a priori synthetic propositions possible, but also, a priori synthetic propositions represent the foundation of metaphysics, as underlying principles that allow for pure reason. In turn this allows the mind access to conceptualize what is beyond humans externally, in the form transcendental philosophy.

In order to by expand on knowledge within the ever-expanding sphere of metaphysics, one must continue to implore and confront new possibilities which arise and are ever- constant. Kant reverts to Hume’s claim of no causality between cause and affect, to add another aspect, the concept of subsistence. By adding this aspect, Kant aims to once and for all do away with Hume’s claim by first drawing it to light to it, and then rejecting it into oblivion. Through a priori synthetic propositions, Kant asserts that it “is” possible to conceive a connection between cause and effect. Kant states, in accordance with Hume’s claim of no relationship between cause and effect, that there is “little insight into the concept of subsistence, i.e., of the necessity that a subject, which itself cannot predicate of any other thing, should underlie the existence of things…” (p.62). In other words, every object or existent thing stands within its own state, and with its own governing principles. It is through a priori synthetic propositions allowed to us by intuition which is given to us through the natural operation of our mental faculties. Thus, with the combining of our sensory intuitions and understanding, we are able to demark an individual object, through isolation of its various representations or appearances. Only then, is the mind capable of articulating a concept of a particular object, though it must be accompanied with experience (par. 62).

This will probably answer a lot of questions on the theoretical philosophy

http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2010/07/immanuel-kants-guide-to-good-dinner.html

How is the science of nature possible?

Earlier in this work, Kant discusses what knowledge one can know definitely and he comes up with a type of knowledge that is a priori, or not dependent on experience. An earlier example used is the statement that a bachelor is an unmarried man. One does not need experience to know that a bachelor is an unmarried man but that through the definition of the word bachelor we understand that this means an unmarried man. However in this second portion of his text, Kant tries to resolve his earlier hinting that in trying to understand what pure knowledge is you can only rely on knowledge that is a priori, and how it is that one can study science in terms of laws and necessary facts.
In trying to resolve these two types of knowledge he states that there are two types of information that need to be defined first. Kant states that perception and experience are different in that we cannot argue against perception, however we can argue against experience. For example if I think that I see a UFO emitting a greenish light and I were to say to you, "Hey, look at that UFO, it seems to me that it is emitting a greenish light". You could not argue that point. By this I mean that it may seem yellow to you but you cannot have any knowledge of how I perceive things. In turn you can argue if I had said that the UFO is emitting green light, because I could be wrong about experience but not about perception.
After this point I became very fuzzy about what Kant means. At this point he is attempting to turn perception into experience, and to do this he uses concepts. there are several concepts that are used in correlation with different types of knowledge. I believe that he uses the concepts to transfer the perception of one's state or future states or the perception of other's states into a truth that is withing the subject and not withing ourselves. The use of the table of concepts evades me at this point. But it seems to me that he uses the table to understand a sentence and uses the a corresponding concept to transform the statement from being reliant on the perceiving to the subject of the statement itself.

Space and Time: The Purest of Possibilities

A very crucial step in Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics is recognizing that there exist synthetic propositions a priori arising from pure reason. Since metaphysics, at least according to Kant, already implies this notion, it must be investigated to what extent it is possible. The intuitions of space and time are the faculties of pure reason within human life that allow this to occur, in mathematics specifically.

These pure intuitions act as forms of sensibility and appearance, in the sense that they precede empirical intuition, as well as defines it. In the past, forms have not been known in themselves, but known in being a template and a model for all other individual things. Essentially, space and time embody this idea. All of the concepts sought out in experience must reflect space and time through sensory representations. Space and time are not equipped with the concepts of things, but can be used to generate them. Perhaps this is exactly the reason Kant believes the intuitions of space and time to be innate entities. We know and understand them as they are, giving experience therafter all of its meaning. At this point, it should be rather obvious that doubting this would make it almost impossible to have synthetic judgements a priori. Consequently, pure mathematics would be looked upon as insufficient and unreliable because what then would constitute all of its concepts?

Pure mathematics illustrates the pure intuitions of space and time. If metaphysics shall be based on this principle (in its own sense of course), then it must follow that subjects of pure reason can withstand and reflect it as well. It also must be understood how it is done so that if metaphysics is to continue, the basis of it will be as solid as mathematics has proved to be. Synthetic judgements allow for the combination of distinct concepts without any assistance from the senses which is precisely how the concepts of mathematics come about. In mathematics, there is emphasis on the certainty it must hold, namely universality and necessity. Hence the reason why mathematics can never be based on experience; it lacks these things. Everything in mathematics is subject to the intuitions of space and time. There is no further way to dissect space or time because they are merely intuitions, or just the way things come to be connected in a “synthetic” manner. The knowledge we obtain from it is just enough to help make valid conclusions and synthetic propositions within this subject.

Kant discusses pure intuitions and empirical intuitions in a distinctive way, while implying that one could not be sufficient without the other; they go hand in hand. Kant distingusihes them in terms of experience in order to bring forth the underlying basis of empirical intuitions. In this case “experience” or “empirical” is referring to things within the senses. Mathematical concepts depict the form of sensibility (space and time ) to then represent them through the senses, which leads to a conclusion that pure mathematics is dominated by a priori cognitions, but facilitated by such experiences.

Intellectual Curiosity: A Reconsideration

Does intellectual curiosity have limits? 

If our guiding principle is, difficulties encountered in the arguments of others, be they written or oral, indicate that there is a "problem with you [the supposedly intellectually curious one]", this leads to a certain bad conscience.  A point at which, as Nietzsche would say, you cannot be done with something. But we do have to be done with things.  And there are badly written philosophical texts, and people who make arguments that are simply incoherent or self-contradictory.

Although this didn't come up in the class meeting last night, it seems like it should be said.  There are probably lots of other difficulties with intellectual curiosity.  

For example, is there never authentic boredom?  Heidegger thinks that there is, and believes that this is the condition necessary for a fundamental attunement.  

I'm intellectually curious, if you have suggestions ...