THE TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC: THE SYSTEM OF PRINCIPLES - KANT

« None the less, Kant's exploration of the principles underlying our judgements is of the highest interest.

A priori judgements, we recall, may be analytic or synthetic.

The highest principle of analytic judgements is the principle of non-contradiction: a self-contradictory judgement is void, and the mark of an analytic judgement is that the contradiction of it is self-contradictory.

But the principle of non-contradiction will not take us beyond the field of analytic propositions: it is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the truth of synthetic propositions. In a synthetic judgement two non-identical concepts are put together.

Kant lists four groups of principles which underpin synthetic judgements: he gives them technical terms, but we need not concern ourselves with these since they are more confusing than helpful. The first of these principles is that all experiences are extensive magnitudes.

Whatever we experience is extended – that is, has parts distinct from other parts – either in space or in time.

‘All appearances,' Kant says, ‘are experienced as aggregates, as complexes of previously given parts.' It is this, according to Kant, which underpins geometrical axioms, such as the axiom that between two points only one straight line is possible. The second principle is that in all appearances the object of sensation has intensive magnitude.

For instance, if you feel a certain degree of heat, you are aware that you could be feeling something hotter or less hot: what you are feeling is a point on a scale which extends in both directions.

Similarly, to see a colour is to see something which is located on a spectrum.

Kant calls this an ‘anticipation of perception', but the term is an unfortunate one: it is as if he is saying that whenever you have a feeling, you can know a priori what feeling is going to come next.

But of course only experience could show that; as Kant says, ‘sensation is just that element which cannot be anticipated'.

When I have a sensation what is known a priori is simply the logical possibility of similar sensations at other points upon a common scale.

To catch Kant's sense a better word than ‘anticipation' might be ‘projection'. The third principle is this: experience is only possible if necessary connections are to be found among our perceptions.

There are two main stages on the way to establishing this.

(a) If I am to have experience at all I must have experience of an objective realm: and this must contain enduring substances.

(b) If I am to have experience of an objective realm I must have experience of causally ordered inter-acting substances.

Each of these stages takes off from reflection on our awareness of time: time considered first a s duration, and then a s succession. First, Kant points out that time itself cannot be perceived.

In the experience of a moment, considered simply as an inner event, there is nothing to show when the experience occurs, or whether it occurs before or after any other given momentary experience.

Our awareness of time, then, must be a relating of phenomena to some permanent, substantial, substratum. If there is to be such a thing as change (as opposed to mere disconnected sequence) then there must be something which is first one thing and then another.

But this permanent element cannot be supplied by our experience, which itself is in constant flux; it must therefore be supplied by something objective, which we may call ‘substance'.

‘All existence and all change in time have thus to be viewed as simply a mode of the existence of that which remains and persists.' There are a number of ambiguities in this argument and its conclusion.

It is not always clear what type of change is being talked about: does the argument concern the coming to be and passing away of substances, or is it about alteration in the properties of an enduring substance? Consequently, there is doubt as to how much is proved by the argument: is the conclusion that there must be some permanent things, or is it that there must b e a single permanent thing? Kant sometimes speaks as if substance must b e something everlasting; but in order to refute empiricist atomism it is sufficient to show that there must be at least some objective entities with nonmomentary duration. The second stage of the argument is based on a simple, but profound, observation.

If I look at a house, there will be a certain succession in my experiences: first, perhaps, I look at the roof, then at the upper floors, then at the ground floor, then at the basement.

Equally, if I stand still and watch a ship moving down a river I have a succession of different views: first of the ship upstream, then of it downstream, and so on.

What distinguishes between a merely subjective succession of phenomena (the various glimpses of a house) and an objective succession (the motion of the ship downstream)? In the one case, but not the other, it would be possible for me to reverse the order of perceptions: and there is no basis for making the distinction except some necessary causal regularity.

‘We never in experience attribute to an object the notion of succession .

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and distinguish it from the subjective succession of apprehension, unless when a rule lies at the foundation.' This shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with Hume's idea that we first perceive temporal succession between events, and then go on to regard one as cause and the other as effect.

Matters are the other way round: without relationships between cause and effect we cannot establish objective order in time.

Moreover, Kant says, even if temporal sequence could be established independently of the cause–effect relation, bare temporal succession would b e insufficient to account for causality, because cause and effect may b e simultaneous.

A ball, laid on a stuffed cushion, makes a hollow in the cushion as soon as it is laid on it, yet the ball is the cause, the hollow the effect.

We know this because every such ball makes a dent, but not every such hollow contains a ball.

The relation between time and causation is more complicated than Hume imagined. Having refuted empiricist atomism and countered Humean scepticism about causal connections, Kant goes on to present his refutation of idealism.

He has in view a twofold target: the problematic idealism of Descartes (‘I exist' is the only indubitable empirical assertion), and the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley (an external world is illusory).

Common to both of these is the thesis that the inner is better known than the outer, and that outer substances are inferred from inner experiences. Kant's argument against these assumptions goes as follows.

I a m aware of changing mental states, and thus I a m conscious of my existence in time: i.e.

as having experiences first at one time and then at another.

But, as has just been argued, the perception of change involves the perception of something permanent.

But this something permanent is not myself: the unifying subject of my experience is not itself an object of experience.

Hence, only if I have outer experience is it possible for me to make judgements about the past. Kant's analytic closes with an insistence on the limits of the competence of the understanding.

The categories cannot determine their own applicability, the principles cannot establish their own truth.

Understanding alone cannot establish that there is any such thing as a substance, or that every change has a cause.

All that is established a priori, whether by the transcendental deduction of the categories, or by the exposition of the system of the principles, is that if experience is to b e possible certain conditions must hold.

But whether experience is possible cannot be established in advance: the possibility of experience is shown only by the actual occurrence of experience itself.

Concepts must be applied only to objects of possible experience; they may not be applied to things in general and in themselves. Unless we are presented in intuition with an object falling under a concept, the concept is empty and pointless. Kant observes that philosophers make a distinction between phenomena (appearances) and noumena (objects of thought), and divide the world into a world of the senses and a world of the understanding.

His own analytic has shown that there cannot be a world of mere appearances, mere objects of sense which do not fall under any categories or instantiate any rules.

But we cannot conclude from this that there is a non-sensible world which is discovered by the understanding alone.

Kant accepts that there are noumena in a negative sense: things which are not objects of sensible awareness.

But he denies that there are noumena in a positive sense: things which are objects of a non-sensible awareness.

The concept of noumenon, rightly understood, is simply a limiting concept, whose function is to set the limits of sensibility.

To accept the existence of noumena as extra-sensible objects which can be studied by the use of intellect alone is to enter a realm of illusion.

In his ‘transcendental dialectic' Kant takes us on an exploratory tour of this world of enchantment.. »