When you are cooped up in an apartment, as I have been for more than seven months, you quite naturally cast about for sources of amusement. This quest has led me to some pretty bad movies on Netflix, to some interesting brief lectures about Paleolithic man on YouTube, and also to a number of the interviews and lectures that have been posted there featuring Noam Chomsky. It is difficult actually to know when the original interview or lecture took place because the date given is simply the date on which it was uploaded, but by watching Noam age and his hair grow somewhat longer, it is possible to take a guess as to whether what I am watching is five years old or 40 years old. After a while, I noticed that he repeats himself, sometimes using the very same linguistic examples. How could it be otherwise? Even for someone like Noam who has virtually transformed an entire field by his work and has ranged across the world in his political commentary, there have to be times when he seeks to say the same things in slightly different ways.
In a much diminished fashion, I face a similar problem.
After publishing 21 books, writing eight or 10 others that have not been
formally published, and posting well over a million words on this blog, I find
myself saying things that at some time, somewhere, in some form or other, I
have said before. Last night as I lay awake at about 3 AM, I began to think
about the deep contradiction that exists between Kant’s theory of knowledge and
his ethical theory, a fact that I think is essential to an understanding of his
work. I have actually published an article on this subject, but it appeared in
a book so obscure that I am not sure anybody still alive has ever read it.
Curious as to whether I had talked about this on my blog, I used the search
facility it provides and sure enough found that at the end of the 19 part
series on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason posted in August 2011, I had indeed
discussed this subject in a relatively brief form.
Now, nine years is several lifetimes in cyberspace and there
cannot be many current readers of this blog who were actually around when I
posted that series and furthermore who read it, so it occurred to me that as we
all await the results of the election, this might be a good time to step aside
from that tension producing enterprise and once again explain why I believe
that there is an insoluble conflict between Kant’s theoretical philosophy and
his moral philosophy. I have no idea whether anyone reading this blog these
days will find the subject of any interest whatsoever but I surely do and it is
my blog so here goes. We shall see how long I can keep myself diverted from an
obsessive examination of the latest poll results.
Let me begin with what theoretical physicists call a gedankenexperiment. Let us suppose that a professor of creative
writing is teaching a class of 12 students to whom she gives the following
exercise: write a short story about this class, being sure that your story
satisfies two requirements, first, that every member of the class appear by
name in the story and second, that the story be in the form of a first person
narration with the narrator being the character in the story who represents
you, the author. In general, we may assume, the twelve students will write twelve
quite different stories but it is imaginable that by some fluke (or, as Leibniz
would say, by a preestablished harmony), all twelve stories will be word for word
identical (I assume that the author refers to himself or herself by name rather
than by the word “I”.)
Even in this unlikely event, the stories will differ each
from the other in one fundamental respect. In each story, the character who
represents the author will be different. In Lydia’s story, the character named
Lydia will be the appearance in the story of the author, who is Lydia. In
Nathan’s story, the character in the story who is the appearance of the author
will be Nathan, and so forth. Leaving aside cheating or joint authorship, is
there any way that two characters in numerically the same story could each be
the appearance in the story of its author? The answer is self-evidently no.
But in order for Kant’s ethical theory to be logically
compatible with his theory of knowledge, the answer to this question would have
to be yes. How so? I will explain.
As I trust we are all aware, Kant believes that the Moral
Law is binding on and applies to persons, which is to say to things in
themselves, or more precisely to selves in themselves, not to phenomenal
appearances. As an appearance in the realm of phenomena, I like every other
appearance stand under universal causal laws. Just as one can with sufficient
knowledge predict the movement of billiard balls or stars or leaves falling
from a tree, so with sufficient knowledge one can predict the behavior (not,
notice, the actions) of human beings.
The Moral Law is the universal principle, knowable a priori,
that binds absolutely all rational agents as such, whether human or otherwise.
The law is experienced by we who are humans and who are only imperfectly
rational, as a categorical imperative or command but if there are perfectly
rational agents, such as angels, they would experience the Moral Law in much
the way that logicians experience the laws governing the syllogism. I may be
tempted to break a promise, hoping that I can get away with it, but no logician
is tempted, when no one is looking, to decide that if some A are B, and some B
are C, then some A are C.
What is more, my duties are to other persons as rational
agents, not to their appearances in the realm of phenomena. It is this fact,
understood if not articulated, that gives rise to the familiar trope in science
fiction of the explorer on a foreign planet who wonders which of the objects
she encounters are the local inhabitants and which are merely part of the fauna
and flora. Is Jar-Jar Binks a rational
agent to whom I owe debts of truth and equity or just an odd looking plant? It may take a while to figure out that
Chewbacca is indeed a person worthy of respect. (I pass over in silence Kant’s
views on duties to oneself, such as the duty to develop one’s talents and not
to abuse oneself. I can understand why some parents may think that a dutiful
son should practice the violin and not masturbate but I do not think that rises
to the level of universal ethical theory.)
And now the problem should be clear. According to Kant (or
at least the interpretation of his philosophy to which I committed myself more
than 60 years ago and from which I have never deviated), the transcendental ego
synthesizes the manifold of intuition in such a manner as to impose upon it
necessitated regularities that constitute the laws of nature. As Kant says in a
famous passage in the first edition Deduction, “the understanding… is itself
the lawgiver of nature.… However exaggerated and absurd it may sound to say
that the understanding is itself the source of the laws of nature, and so of its
formal unity, such an assertion is nonetheless correct and is in keeping with
the object to which it refers, namely experience.” (A126-7)
On reflection, it should be immediately obvious that just as
it cannot be the case that two students in the class are each of them the
author of numerically the same short story, even if each writes a story that is
word for word identical with that written by the other, so it cannot be the
case that two different noumenal agents, through their synthesizing activities
in their role as transcendental egos, bring into existence numerically the same
field of experience. Which means that no morally responsible agent, no person,
can ever encounter in his or her or its field of experience the phenomenal
appearance of another moral agent.
One could of course try to save Kant’s moral theory by
arguing that it is not false but merely vacuous. The moral law would bind me if
I could ever encounter someone to whom I could make promises or to whom I could
tell the truth or with whom collectively I could enact the laws of the realm of
ends, but by an obstacle impossible to overcome, I can never in principle be in
a position to put the Moral Law into action.
I am quite certain that Kant himself was never aware of this
problem and it is my impression, unsupported by an adequate reading of the
secondary literature, that the problem is not widely recognized even today by
Kant scholars.
Well, enough of that. Back to dissecting the polls.
31 comments:
I’m puzzled—not, I hasten to add, in any profound sense—by your statement that you committed yourself to a certain interpretation of Kant’s philosophy more than 60 years ago. Do you mean that you took your interpretation to be correct and that 60 years of thinking about it have not led you to doubt it? Or did you commit yourself to this intepretation in the same way that someone might say they committed themselves to, say, the truth of Christianity?
I also wonder how your ‘commitment to that interpretation’ fits in with the interpretation itself. I.e., is your act of commitment valid within the Kantian system as you understand it to be?
Or are these stupid questions?
Hi Prof. Wolff
I'm trying to understand you and have a question:
I'm not sure what the word 'numerical' means. In your hypothetical example you ask: "is there any way that two characters in numerically the same story could each be the appearance in the story of its author?". Here I am assuming that numerical refers to the number of people (12) who appear in the story.
Later on though you say: "it cannot be the case that two students in the class are each of them the author of numerically the same short story", after which you draw your conclusion about Kant.
So in the first instance they are the author of numerically the same story, but the author of each story is different, and in the second case it's not possible for them to be the author of numerically the same story.
Sorry if this sounds obtuse, but I think it's preventing me from appreciating your point. I was hoping you could clarify.
Thanks!
By "numerically the same" I mean identically the same story, not just perfectly point for point similar. Just as I cannot sneeze your sneeze, although I can sneeze a sneeze that is just like your sneeze. There cannot be two moral agents who appear in one single phenomenal realm, because a phenomenal realm is [in a manner of speaking] a story told by one noumenal self. Is that any clearer?
“On reflection, it should be immediately obvious that just as it cannot be the case that two students in the class are each of them the author of numerically the same short story, even if each writes a story that is word for word identical with that written by the other, so it cannot be the case that two different noumenal agents, through their synthesizing activities in their role as transcendental egos, bring into existence numerically the same field of experience. Which means that no morally responsible agent, no person, can ever encounter in his or her or its field of experience the phenomenal appearance of another moral agent.”
I’m not a Kant scholar but I’ve read the first Critique, the Groundwork, your tutorial on Kant’s first Critique, and numerous books on Kant’s epistemology and ethics (by Allen Wood, Paul Guyer, and Georges Dicker). I think Kant would reject the last sentence: “no morally responsible agent, no person, can ever encounter in his... field of experience the phenomenal appearance of another moral agent.” This is wrong. I’m a moral agent and I experience the appearances (phenomena) of other persons/moral agents whenever I look at my wife or go outside for a walk and see other people. Yes, I may not experience their noumenal selves (i.e. the persons in themselves) but I certainly experience their appearances: their physical bodies, gestures, behavior, oral communication, etc. So here Kant would simply invoke transcendental idealism: we can experience or know things as they appear (phenomena) but we cannot experience or know things in themselves (noumena).
“so it cannot be the case that two different noumenal agents, through their synthesizing activities in their role as transcendental egos, bring into existence numerically the same field of experience”
This is true but this does not entail that two noumenal agents (persons in themselves) cannot have fields of experience that largely (or partly) resemble each other and thus have a “shared, common” experience (in the loose sense). Being unable to have the numerically identical field of experience does not entail being unable to have any shared, common experiences. If it did entail this, then none of us could have the shared, common experience of living under Trump’s authoritarian regime for the past four years, and the empirical, natural sciences would have no basis, since they are based on shared, common experience.
If we focus on your analogy, then, yes, the students cannot each be the author of the numerically identical story (unless they’re cheating and writing jointly) but they can write about the same event (e.g. the first class meeting) using similar language and details. They could even write about the same event using almost the exact same language. In this case, their stories would almost entirely resemble one another. Similarly, we can have numerically different fields of experience that largely (or partially) resemble one another, which allows us to have shared, common experiences. And in our numerically different fields of experience, we can encounter the appearances/phenomena of other persons/moral agents.
Prof. Wolff, it’s been 52 years since I took your course on Kant’s Ethics, so I am a bit rusty. You write, “[N]o morally responsible agent, no person, can ever encounter in his or her or its field of experience the phenomenal appearance of another moral agent,” which I interpret to mean that, according to Kant, at any given time in the universe, there can be only one moral agent. If so, at the present time, if Donald Trump is not that moral agent, who is? (Caveat: The statute of limitations has run on changing my grade.)
I thought I had made myself clear, but apparently not, so let me say a few things quickly in response to the comments by C. If this does not clear things up, then all I may have to write another lengthy post. First of all, of course kant would not agree! I am claiming that his theory of knowledge is logically incompatible with this ethical theory. It goes without saying that he would not agree, but that hardly settles the matter surely. Look, if you take Kant's theory of knowledge as set forth in the first critique really seriously, then it follows that Kant is committed, although he himself does not realize it, to a solipsism. Why? Because the phenomenal world is a set of rule governed reproductions in imagination Of a manifold of sensibility carried out by the transcendental ego, which simply is the noumenal self in its theoretical rather than in its practical functioning. I thought it would be obvious Kant's moral philosophy is not satisfied by the supposition that two different moral agents have resembling experiences of different synthetically reorganized manifolds of intuition. In order for me to make a promise to another noumenal agent, it is not enough that I verbally utter the words "I promise" to some particular arrangement of a portion of the manifold of intuition in my unity of consciousness and that in some other unity of consciousness that is forever closed to me, some completely separate noumenal self whom I never actually encounter hears words uttered in his or her or its unity of consciousness that are an echo of the same words as those that I uttered in my unity of consciousness. After all, Kant started his journey to the critical philosophy by rejecting Leibniz's theory of preestablished harmony. Would Kant agree with this? Good Lord no! He would have rejected it flatly out of hand and would have said that I fail to understand. But he would have been wrong.
And no, I did not on the road to Damascus have a conversion 60 years ago and embrace as a matter of faith an interpretation of the text. I simply meant to say that after I had worked out what I still believe to be the correct interpretation of the critique, I have not seen any arguments that have persuaded me that my interpretation was incorrect.
Tyler J:
Qualitative identity: when two or more things have exactly the same qualities, features, properties, etc. They perfectly resemble each other. For example, two drinking glasses that perfectly resemble each other (have exactly the same qualities) at the microscopic level but they are numerically distinct (hence two glasses).
Numerical identity: one and the same thing. Two drinking glasses cannot be numerically identical, since they are two. But they can be qualitatively identical.
RPW:
“There cannot be two moral agents who appear in one single phenomenal realm, because a phenomenal realm is [in a manner of speaking] a story told by one noumenal self”
See my comment above. Kant would reject this. A noumenal self has a phenomenal “realm” or field of experience, and in that field of experience, the self can encounter the phenomena/appearances of other moral agents. The noumenal self is a moral agent, and he can encounter the appearances of other moral agents (but not their noumena, i.e. the moral agents in themselves). So you can have two or more moral agents in one field of experience (phenomenal “realm”), and one of these moral agents can be the noumenal self that has the field of experience.
This is what you do- not just revise great thinkers but adapt them by making their work more logically coherent- sometimes a bit of the puzzle remains- however you must think there is something essentially worthwhile about Kant despite difficulties and contradictions. Maybe just like you can have modern physics even with the jousting between quantum and relativistic physics, we can keep Kant despite his problems, Most of modern philosophy can seem as a reaction to Kant
"By "numerically the same" I mean identically the same story, not just perfectly point for point similar. Just as I cannot sneeze your sneeze, although I can sneeze a sneeze that is just like your sneeze. There cannot be two moral agents who appear in one single phenomenal realm, because a phenomenal realm is [in a manner of speaking] a story told by one noumenal self. Is that any clearer?"
Yes, thank you!
Returning to things political, Judge Barrett is well on her way to being confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Well, we are going to learn early on whether she is as honest as she claims and will be able to separate her religious beliefs from her judicial decision making, because I just learned watching the news tonight that one of the first cases she will be called upon to decide is a purported religious freedom case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, in which Philadelphia has conditioned its contract with Catholic Social Services to provide child placement services for the City on a requirement that CSC provide those services in a nondiscriminatory manner. Now, the City has a contract with CSS, as well as with other social service organizations, to provide the child placement services, and as was pointed out in a prior comment to a prior posting, a contract requires was is legally referred to as “consideration,” i.e., compensation, in this case in the form of money. In exchange for the social service organizations’ providing this service, the City pays the organizations a per diem amount to cover the cost of providing these services for each child the organization places with a foster family. CSS claims that the nondiscrimination policy violates it freedom of religion under the 1st Amendment. Why? Because the nondiscrimination policy requires CSS to consider placing children with gay couples, which CSS claims violates its religious tenets. The trial court rejected this position, as did the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals by a 3-0 vote.
And yet the Supreme Court granted certiorari, which I find absolutely astounding. I have not checked on what the cert vote was, which occurred while Justice Ginsburg was still alive, but I can guarantee it was at least 4 to 5 (it only takes 4 Justices to grant certiorar), with Justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch voting in favor of cert. Now, why am I astounded that they granted cert? Because you don’t have to be a law school graduate or a constitutional law professor to see the fallacy in CSS’s argument. They are arguing that if government gives a religious institution money to provide a service to the government, then the government cannot place restrictions on how that money is used by the religious organization, because to do so would violate the religious organization’s freedom of religion. This argument borders on religious chutzpah, because by government providing money to a religious organization with no conditions – saying to the religious organization, “We will pay you money, and you can violate the law in the name of religious freedom” – government would be violating the Establishment Clause, which requires separation of church and state, and precludes government from subsidizing any religion. Here, the monetary subsidy arguably does not violate the Establishment clause as long as the religious organization is not allowed to use its religious precepts as a basis for violating the law.
But apparently there were already 4 Justices who were willing to overlook the fallacy in CSS’s argument, and I am quite skeptical that Justice Amy Coney Barrett will see through the fallacy and abide by her pledge not to allow her religious beliefs interfere with her judicial decision making. And the walls are going to start to come tumbling down.
MS
Do you read and/or are you familiar with SCOTUS Blog?
I only go there quite rarely myself, but for someone like you I think it wd be a good resource: links to the briefs and orders in SCOTUS cases, summaries of the oral arguments, backgrounders on cases, etc etc. It was started by 2 or 3 lawyers who practice before SCOTUS (though not nec. the biggest names in the Sup Ct Bar they definitely know what they're talking about) and it's written by them and others.
SCOTUS Blog is also, afaik, free to anyone with an internet connection, so it's a lot less expensive than subscribing, say, to US Law Week (previously put out by BNA, now Bloomberg/BNA), assuming US Law Week still exists under that name...
LFC,
No, I was not familiar with SCOTUS blog. Thank you for the reference. I will check it out.
Prof. Wolff, I think the reason it appears to you that this issue is not talked about in Kant scholarship is that you take it as relatively straightforward that Kant's position amounts to solipsism. Very few Kant scholars would agree, perhaps out of misguided loyalty to their favorite philosopher. I think most are aware, or could be readily brought to awareness, of the point that solipsism would be devastating for his moral philosophy. And so the interpretive energy goes not to developing that problem or trying to solve it, but to trying to find resources in his own philosophy for undermining the apparent solipsism. A brief googling sends me to this paper about Fichte: https://journals.openedition.org/ref/859?lang=en#tocto1n2 , but with some setup in Kant and Kant scholarship. Looks like the action might be in some passages in the Transcendental Dialectic and the Anthropology.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/amy-coney-barrett-s-first-decision-justice-was-wrong-one-n1244892?icid=msd_topgrid
Anonymous,
Thank you pointing this story out. It certainly does not bode well for Justice Barrett’s claim that she will “declare [her] independence not only ... from the president but also from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her.” By her appearance with Il Duce in a public victory lap demonstrates her hypocrisy. I suspect we will see much more such hypocrisy from her in the future.
Since the passing of Justice Ginsburg, a lot of people have commented that her successor will have some pretty big shoes to fill. Those shoes will now have to be filled by Justice Amy Comey Barrett. I would like to relate a story related to my prior comment regarding a religious freedom case that is now before the Supreme Court, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which pits a Catholic organization against the City on an issue the CSS claims is one of religious freedom (but which I claim is an issue of separation of church and state). The story highlights just how great Justice Ginsburg was not just on issues relating to women’s rights.
In 1994 a case went to the Supreme Court titled Board of Ed. of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet. The case involved a group of Hasidic Jews belonging to the Satmar sect of Orthodox Judaism. The Satmar sect is very insular and very Orthodox. They do not intermingle with non-Jews, in fact they do not mingle with Jews who are not Orthodox. (If you saw the Netflix movie series “The Unorthodox,” the Jewish sect portrayed in that series were Satmar Jews. They are so Ortodox that they have rejected the legitimacy of the State of Israel, on the basis that, according to the Torah, Jews are not supposed to return to the Promised Land as a nation until the Messiah has arrived, and by all accounts, the Messiah has not yet arrived, Donald Trump notwithstanding.) This group of Orthodox Jews purchased land in upstate New York which they exclusively occupied. Their children attended Jewish yeshivas, where they obtained an exclusively religious education. However, they had certain students who were disabled and had special needs, which their parents and the community could not address because they lacked the educational background to do so. They first addressed this by making an arrangement with the public school district to send special education teachers to work within the Hasidic community. But then the Supreme Court issued two decisions which indicated that this arrangement was unconstitutional, because it violated the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment.
So the Hasidic community reached an agreement with the local school board to allow their children with special needs to attend public schools only for the purpose of addressing their special needs. Since the members of the Orthodox community paid taxes, the school district said fine, send them over. This arrangement worked for a while, until certain incidents due to cultural incongruities, so to speak, occurred. For example, during a Christmas school play, the teachers at the school district had one of the Jewish students dress up as Rudolph the Reindeer, who does not appear in the Torah. Another incident occurred in which a teacher took the students, Jewish students included, to MacDonald’s for lunch, where the meat used by MacDonald’s was not kosher.
So the Orthodox community got upset and withdrew their children from the public school. But they still needed to have the educational needs of their disabled children met, which they were entitled to under federal law. So they proposed that legislation be passed by New York which would designate their village as an independent school district, which would entitle it to receive funding for the special needs of the children in the school district, and to hire special education teachers to address the needs of their special education students.
(Continued)
When the legislation came before Governor Mario Cuomo to sign into law, he was approached by a political friend of his, Louis Grumet, a Jewish attorney who was also the director of the New York State School Boards Association. Mr. Grumet met with Gov. Cuomo and told him he should not sign the bill into law, because it violated the Establishment Clause. Gov. Cuomo, who was concerned that if he vetoed the bill he would lose the support of the numerous Jewish voters in New York, responded to Mr. Grument’s objection, “Whose going to sue?” And Mr. Grumet responded, “I will,” and sue he did.
The lawsuit was commenced in New York state court. The trial court agreed with the plaintiff that the statute was unconstitutional. The New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in N.Y.) affirmed. The Hasidic community, which had intervened in the lawsuit, sought and was granted certiorari by the Supreme Court. In a majority decision written by Justice Souter (one of Prof. Wolff’s former students at Harvard), J. Souter affirmed the lower court’s ruling that the creation of a school district composed exclusively of members of one religion violated the Establishment Clause. He wrote: “The fundamental source of constitutional concern here is that the legislature itself may fail to exercise governmental authority in a religiously neutral way. The anomalously case-specific nature of the legislature’s exercise of state authority in creating this district for a religious community leaves the Court without any direct way to review such state action for the purposed of safeguarding a principle at the heart of the Establishment Clause, that government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion.”
Justice Scalia wrote a strong dissent, arguing that the legislation was really recognizing the free exercise of religion by the Hasidic community by accommodating their need for special education teachers. stating: “Justice Souter’s position boils down to the quite novel proposition that any group of citizens (say the residents of Kiryas Joel) can be invested with political power, but not if they all belong to the same religion. Of course such disfavloring of religion is positively antagonistic to the purposes of the Religion Clauses, and we have rejected it before.” His dissent was joined by Justices Rehnquist and Thomas.
How did Justice Ginsburg vote? Justices Stevens and Blackmun wrote an opinion concurring with Justice Souter. Justice Ginsburg joined that concurrence. Justice Ginsburg, being Jewish, could have easily joined Justice Scalia’s dissent. The dissent was not entirely without legal merit. And no one would have faulted her for joining that dissent, which would have been regarded by many to be the natural thing to do, in support of people who shared her religion (although Justice Ginsburg was a secular Jew, not an Orthodox Jew.) But she refused to do so. She recognized that her personal religious views should not interfere with her duty as a Supreme Court Justice. I strongly suspect that in a lot of Jewish households – and not just Orthodox Jewish households -Justice Ginsburg vote was viewed as a stab in the back.
In the case of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Justice Barrett is going to be faced with the same choice Justice Ginsburg was faced with. It seems to me that what the CCS are demanding from the City of Philadelphia is that the City violate the Establishment Clause, by paying money to CCS at the same time the City overlooked the City’s non-discrimination policy. Time will tell whether Justice Barrett has the backbone and integrity of Justice Ginsburg, or if she is the hypocrite that her appearance with President Trump after her being sworn in strongly suggests that she is.
What a grammatical error. "Who's going to sue?" Not "Whose going to sue." My keyboard again.
Thanks for your post today about Kant and other minds. Thinking about the First Critique is so much more pleasant than thinking about the news!
I came across this blog post by a pseudonymous author:
https://humansymposium.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/kant-and-other-minds/
It points to an interesting suggestion by Pierre Keller that Kant's Third Paralogism contains an argument that the possibility of other minds is a necessary condition for the coherence of thinking of oneself as enduring over time. In the blogger's words, "In order to be able to represent ourselves as enduring over time, we need to think about ourselves from a 3rd person perspective, seeing ourselves as an ‘object’ represented by other minds."
The blog post also presents an argument, drawing on Andrew Chignell's discussion of "non-epistemic merit," that Kant thinks there is a moral, non-epistemic reason to believe that other people exist.
I wonder if either of these suggestions (if sound) would address the worry.
Professor Wolff:
“Look, if you take Kant's theory of knowledge as set forth in the first Critique really seriously, then it follows that Kant is committed, although he himself does not realize it, to a solipsism.”
“Would Kant agree with this? Good Lord no! He would have rejected it flatly out of hand and would have said that I fail to understand. But he would have been wrong.”
Yes, Kant would have *adamantly* rejected your claim that his theory of knowledge ultimately leads to solipsism: that there is only one field of experience, MY field of experience, i.e. the transcendental subject’s phenomenal world. As I’m sure you know, in the first scholarly review of the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (the Göttingen review), the anonymous author argued that Kant’s transcendental idealism was tantamount to Berkeley’s subjective idealism (which seems close to solipsism). Kant adamantly rejected this claim and in response to the review, he wrote the ‘Prolegomena’ and the second edition of the Critique.
“In order for me to make a promise to another noumenal agent, it is not enough that I verbally utter the words "I promise" to some particular arrangement of a portion of the manifold of intuition in my unity of consciousness and that in some other unity of consciousness that is forever closed to me, some completely separate noumenal self whom I never actually encounter hears words uttered in his […] unity of consciousness that are an echo of the same words as those that I uttered in my unity of consciousness.”
Yes, this clarifies your point that you think Kant’s theory of knowledge is logically incompatible with his ethical theory.
But, for now, let’s bracket Kant’s ethical theory and the talk of noumenal selves as moral agents. If you’re correct in saying that Kant’s theory of knowledge ultimately leads to solipsism, then Kant seems to have a massive problem on his hand: if solipsism is true, then we cannot have a “shared, common” experience (in the loose sense). After all, there is only one field of experience (phenomenal world), MY field of experience, and so there is no shared, common experience, since there are no other fields of experience that can resemble my field of experience. If we cannot have any shared, common experience, then we do not have the shared, common experience of the following: living under the Trump regime for the past four years; living during the coronavirus pandemic; looking at Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon (for those who have seen these things in person); or using a smartphone. I have my field of experience (phenomenal world), and the rest of you participating on this blog are just appearances (i.e. in the form of text comments or blogger photos) in my field of experience.
Even worse, if we cannot have any shared, common experience, then it seems the empirical, natural sciences have no basis, since they depend on shared, common experience.
Ultimately, whether or not Kant is ultimately a solipsist comes down to his transcendental idealism and his transcendental deduction. Transcendental idealism is the thesis that we can experience or know things as they appear (phenomena) but we cannot experience or know things in themselves (noumena). The transcendental deduction is Kant’s proof of the objective validity of synthetic a priori cognition (knowledge), i.e. the proof that synthetic a priori cognition (knowledge) is universally and necessarily applicable to objects.
In any case, it is great to discuss something other than Trump and the election.
Thanks for writing about Kant (and the story analogy is wonderful). I am alternately bored and terrified reading about the polls.
Best,
David
I would like to make an observation, acknowledging that it has been some time since I read the Critique, or any of Kant’s other works (all of which are sitting on bookshelves in the philosophy library in my basement). Following Descartes’ cogito, I cannot prove that there are other sentient beings besides myself. And following Berkeley, we cannot prove that there are objects which exist outside our immediate consciousness of what seems to us to be permanent objects which exist even when we are not conscious of them, and may all exist only in the mind of God. And following Hume, we cannot prove that causation is a phenomenon which actually occurs and therefore it is possible that the sun will not rise tomorrow. And per Kant, we believe all these things by virtue of the categories of understanding, which mediates between the Ding an Sich and our perceptions (my apologies, Prof. Wolff if this adumbration does not do justice to Kant’s philosophy). However, ala Gödel, we cannot disprove them either – I cannot disprove that other minds exist besides my own; nor that objects do not exist when I am not perceiving them; nor that x does not cause y, despite the fact that y always follows x. So, the fact that I cannot disprove these things is justification enough to believe them. It is not irrational to believe things that one cannot disprove, even if one cannot prove them. That is, what is rational to believe is not limited to only what one can prove syllogistically. (If this is an entirely irrelevant and meaningless observation, Prof. Wolff, please feel free to tell me so.)
Regarding Kant’s Ethics, is it possible to determine what Kant’s views regarding abortion would be, or is this an idle speculation? Given his emphasis on reason in ethics, would the point at which a fetus could have the potential to reason (even if not the actual present ability to do so) be a consideration in determining the point at which during gestation it would be immoral to abort?
Post-script:
I should add to what I wrote above, and the fact that I cannot disprove those things we believe in accordance with Kant’s categories of understanding means that those beliefs have just as much likelihood of in fact being correct as their alternatives, i.e., that there are in fact other minds vs. that solipsism is correct; or that there are in fact objects which exist outside my consciousness, vs. no permanent objects exist outside my consciousness; or that in some instances x does in fact cause y, vs. x never causes y.
Does Nelson Goodman’s argument regarding counterfactuals refute what I have written above? If the fact that I cannot disprove proposition p mean that it is rational to believe p, then the fact that I cannot disprove that unicorns exist means that it is rational to believe that unicorns do exist. My response: Outside of books, I have never even observed the image of a unicorn, but I have observed images of trees. Therefore, at least having visual evidence that trees exist, the fact that I cannot disprove that trees exist when I am not looking at them suffices in it being rational to believe that trees do in fact exist when I am not looking at them, whereas the fact that I cannot disprove that unicorns do not exist does not, in and of itself, justify my believing that they do exist.
I suspect there are many philosophical treatises suggesting that my analysis is flawed, and therefore not amenable to a discussion in a simple comment section, but if someone can demonstrate in a rather abbreviated comment that my analysis is erroneous, and why, I would appreciate it.
I agree that thinking about the compatibility of Kant's theoretical and moral doctrines is therapeutic as Election Day looms.
Professor Wolff, you discussed this problem with our Laramie class this spring,(and do recall that I brought the article from obscurity and sent it to you so that others may read it). I have been mulling it over for months.
The question that I'm now thinking about is this: does Kant ever explicitly spell out the relation between the transcendental unity of apperception and the noumenal self?
I sure miss having class with you!
Fondly,
Jennifer
I don't see the problem. I can never know for sure (without the tiniest possibility of an error ) that some of the phenomena I experience are manifestations of another rational noumemena like myself. But I don't see why I could not have good *evidence* for this. And if I have good evidence for this isn't that good enough? According to Kant I can know for sure that I have obligations to other rational agents, I can have evidence that the creatures I meet are rational agents, so I can evidence, though not absolutely conclusive evidence, that I have obligations to the creatures that I meet. Thus there is barely a problem let alone a contradiction here.
Charles Pigden,
Since you appear to have more than just a passing knowledge of Kant, do you have an opinion regarding what Kant’s views on abortion might have been, or is there insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion one way or the other?
(By the way, if I am not mistaken, you took issue with a comment I made about Bertrand Russell several years ago, regarding his ethics given his alleged sexual relationship with his daughter-in-law. an allegation you maintained was false.)
Should have been noumenon I guess
I would not know enough to say. The key issue for Kant I suspect is whether the foetus qualifies as a rational agent. If it doesn't then abortion if is OK. if it does then not. At least that's what I think Kant would think.
I have recently been working ion a Kant paper & will a return to it again when I have completed the huge pile of marking that I have to wade through. But it opens up with a confession of my own relative ignorance.
Then the question would be how he would evaluate whether a fetus was a rational agent. And as far as I can tell, there is no way to determine this, even with the use of modern science. It is, I believe, indeterminable. One cannot judge, it seems to me, simply by virtue of the degree to which the fetus’s brain has developed that it is, or is not, a rational agent. The fact that it may feel pain, which many who oppose abortion, maintain is the determining factor, would not indicate that the fetus is a rational agent. Therefore, since this would remain to be the case up to the point of delivery, it seems to me that Kant could not, based on his philosophy, maintain that abortion was immoral at any time during gestation. Any thoughts?
re Rob Hughes claim: It points to an interesting suggestion by Pierre Keller that Kant's Third Paralogism contains an argument that the possibility of other minds is a necessary condition for the coherence of thinking of oneself as enduring over time. In the blogger's words, "In order to be able to represent ourselves as enduring over time, we need to think about ourselves from a 3rd person perspective, seeing ourselves as an ‘object’ represented by other minds."
I don't know if Hegel had Kant specifically in mind (maybe?) when he said, in the opening line of Lordship and Bondage: "Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself,in that, and by the fact that, it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or 'recognized'." One might note that Hegel seems to be making the same kind of transcendental argument attributed here, by Keller, to Kant.
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