Reason and regulation in Kant

Review of Metaphysics

Volumn 53, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 835-860

  Rush Jr , Fred L ^a  

^a 3052 Wescoe Hall ^*  (United States)

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References (88)

1. By "positive conception of reason," I mean reason in its affirmative theoretical employment.
2. Kant never uses the precise phrase "transcendental argument" and it is doubtful that there occur any transcendental arguments in the strict sense in the first Critique, save perhaps in the Refutation of Idealism. It makes sense, nevertheless, to attempt to grasp the general features of the transcendental enterprise by understanding in a general way what a transcendental argument might be.
3. Whether transcendental arguments are good arguments at all, whether they reduce to verificationalism, and so forth, has been a topic of much concern, but I will not address it here.
4. That transcendental arguments are not so limited is apparent from their pervasive use by diverse thinkers, although it is fairly characteristic that what they are meant to establish are very general philosophical truths. A sample of such use: post-Kantian idealists - on some interpretations, Fichte (see Fred Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975]) and Hegel (see Charles Taylor, Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], and the opening chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit); middle and late period Husserl (beginning with the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen, and onward); early period Heidegger (Sein und Zeit §7C); Wittgenstein (Tractatus and, depending on interpretation, the Investigations); Habermas; Strawson; Davidson; and even Derrida (on some interpretations, for example, Roland Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991]). Whether such arguments are present in pre-Kantian philosophy as well is an interesting question. For a suggested interpretation of Descartes along such lines, see Harry Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). Husserl also claims Descartes to be the originator of "transcendental philosophy" in Cartesianische Meditation 1.
5. That transcendental arguments are not so limited is apparent from their pervasive use by diverse thinkers, although it is fairly characteristic that what they are meant to establish are very general philosophical truths. A sample of such use: post-Kantian idealists - on some interpretations, Fichte (see Fred Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975]) and Hegel (see Charles Taylor, Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], and the opening chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit); middle and late period Husserl (beginning with the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen, and onward); early period Heidegger (Sein und Zeit §7C); Wittgenstein (Tractatus and, depending on interpretation, the Investigations); Habermas; Strawson; Davidson; and even Derrida (on some interpretations, for example, Roland Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991]). Whether such arguments are present in pre-Kantian philosophy as well is an interesting question. For a suggested interpretation of Descartes along such lines, see Harry Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). Husserl also claims Descartes to be the originator of "transcendental philosophy" in Cartesianische Meditation 1.
6. That transcendental arguments are not so limited is apparent from their pervasive use by diverse thinkers, although it is fairly characteristic that what they are meant to establish are very general philosophical truths. A sample of such use: post-Kantian idealists - on some interpretations, Fichte (see Fred Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975]) and Hegel (see Charles Taylor, Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], and the opening chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit); middle and late period Husserl (beginning with the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen, and onward); early period Heidegger (Sein und Zeit §7C); Wittgenstein (Tractatus and, depending on interpretation, the Investigations); Habermas; Strawson; Davidson; and even Derrida (on some interpretations, for example, Roland Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991]). Whether such arguments are present in pre-Kantian philosophy as well is an interesting question. For a suggested interpretation of Descartes along such lines, see Harry Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). Husserl also claims Descartes to be the originator of "transcendental philosophy" in Cartesianische Meditation 1.
7. That transcendental arguments are not so limited is apparent from their pervasive use by diverse thinkers, although it is fairly characteristic that what they are meant to establish are very general philosophical truths. A sample of such use: post-Kantian idealists - on some interpretations, Fichte (see Fred Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975]) and Hegel (see Charles Taylor, Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], and the opening chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit); middle and late period Husserl (beginning with the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen, and onward); early period Heidegger (Sein und Zeit §7C); Wittgenstein (Tractatus and, depending on interpretation, the Investigations); Habermas; Strawson; Davidson; and even Derrida (on some interpretations, for example, Roland Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991]). Whether such arguments are present in pre-Kantian philosophy as well is an interesting question. For a suggested interpretation of Descartes along such lines, see Harry Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). Husserl also claims Descartes to be the originator of "transcendental philosophy" in Cartesianische Meditation 1.
8. That transcendental arguments are not so limited is apparent from their pervasive use by diverse thinkers, although it is fairly characteristic that what they are meant to establish are very general philosophical truths. A sample of such use: post-Kantian idealists - on some interpretations, Fichte (see Fred Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975]) and Hegel (see Charles Taylor, Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], and the opening chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit); middle and late period Husserl (beginning with the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen, and onward); early period Heidegger (Sein und Zeit §7C); Wittgenstein (Tractatus and, depending on interpretation, the Investigations); Habermas; Strawson; Davidson; and even Derrida (on some interpretations, for example, Roland Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991]). Whether such arguments are present in pre-Kantian philosophy as well is an interesting question. For a suggested interpretation of Descartes along such lines, see Harry Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). Husserl also claims Descartes to be the originator of "transcendental philosophy" in Cartesianische Meditation 1.
9. That is, constitutive of possible experience. As with the terms "transcendentally necessary for" or "regulative," it is always crucial to ask: constitutive for what? Kant's positive conception of reason will involve claims that rational principles are constitutive of certain domains, that is, that without the principle, the domain would not be possible. The easy Kantian case involves the domain of moral agency. The challenging case involves epistemic agency.
10. Kant also talks about pure concepts (that is, constructed mathematical concepts) and even the categories as "products of the understanding." In the latter case, at least, this is obscure and I will not try to explain the idea here.
11. Citations to the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter, "CPR") utilize the customary first (A) and second (B) edition format. All other citations to Kant are to Kants gesammelte Schriften (hereafter, "AK"), ed. Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-), given with volume and page number. CPR, A643/B671
12. Citations to the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter, "CPR") utilize the customary first (A) and second (B) edition format. All other citations to Kant are to Kants gesammelte Schriften (hereafter, "AK"), ed. Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-), given with volume and page number. CPR, A643/B671
13. Citations to the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter, "CPR") utilize the customary first (A) and second (B) edition format. All other citations to Kant are to Kants gesammelte Schriften (hereafter, "AK"), ed. Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-), given with volume and page number. CPR, A643/B671
14. CPR, A644/B672.
15. CPR, A797/B825.
16. This sort of systematicity, the systematicity of concepts purportedly ordering nature or of nature itself, is quite different from another notion of systematicity at work in Kant and must not be confused with it. This other notion of systematicity pertains to the unity and structure of philosophical theories and, in particular, theories of the sort Kant puts forward. The principles Kant enumerates and thinks required for systematicity in the first sense do not figure in his account of systematicity in the second sense. In point of fact, Kant never worked out in any detail an account of systematicity of philosophical theory. His rather general statements on this issue were intended to announce a general desideratum that was, in its day, anodyne (that is, that philosophical theories should be systematic), to indicate in very broad stroke how that systematicity might be effected (by grounding the various faculties, and especially the two aspects of reason in one principle [Grundsatz]), and to hope that others would take up that work. For sample statements, see CPA, A840/B868; Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, AK, 4:391; Critique of Practical Reason, AK, 5:90-1. Compare CPA, A15/B29, where Kant says that there may be a common root of the faculties that is unknown to us (uns unbekannt), but does not make the stronger claim that such a root is unknowable. Many post-Kantian idealists took these suggestions quite seriously, dividing roughly into three camps: one attempting to secure in a single principle the ground for all theoretical or representational faculties by stressing features of Kant's philosophy of mind (for example, Reinhold), others turning more particularly to the problem of the unity of practical and theoretical reason (for example, Fichte). Still others attempted systematization by focusing on the role assigned to imagination and reflection in the third Critique (for example, Schelling).
17. This sort of systematicity, the systematicity of concepts purportedly ordering nature or of nature itself, is quite different from another notion of systematicity at work in Kant and must not be confused with it. This other notion of systematicity pertains to the unity and structure of philosophical theories and, in particular, theories of the sort Kant puts forward. The principles Kant enumerates and thinks required for systematicity in the first sense do not figure in his account of systematicity in the second sense. In point of fact, Kant never worked out in any detail an account of systematicity of philosophical theory. His rather general statements on this issue were intended to announce a general desideratum that was, in its day, anodyne (that is, that philosophical theories should be systematic), to indicate in very broad stroke how that systematicity might be effected (by grounding the various faculties, and especially the two aspects of reason in one principle [Grundsatz]), and to hope that others would take up that work. For sample statements, see CPA, A840/B868; Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, AK, 4:391; Critique of Practical Reason, AK, 5:90-1. Compare CPA, A15/B29, where Kant says that there may be a common root of the faculties that is unknown to us (uns unbekannt), but does not make the stronger claim that such a root is unknowable. Many post-Kantian idealists took these suggestions quite seriously, dividing roughly into three camps: one attempting to secure in a single principle the ground for all theoretical or representational faculties by stressing features of Kant's philosophy of mind (for example, Reinhold), others turning more particularly to the problem of the unity of practical and theoretical reason (for example, Fichte). Still others attempted systematization by focusing on the role assigned to imagination and reflection in the third Critique (for example, Schelling).
18. This sort of systematicity, the systematicity of concepts purportedly ordering nature or of nature itself, is quite different from another notion of systematicity at work in Kant and must not be confused with it. This other notion of systematicity pertains to the unity and structure of philosophical theories and, in particular, theories of the sort Kant puts forward. The principles Kant enumerates and thinks required for systematicity in the first sense do not figure in his account of systematicity in the second sense. In point of fact, Kant never worked out in any detail an account of systematicity of philosophical theory. His rather general statements on this issue were intended to announce a general desideratum that was, in its day, anodyne (that is, that philosophical theories should be systematic), to indicate in very broad stroke how that systematicity might be effected (by grounding the various faculties, and especially the two aspects of reason in one principle [Grundsatz]), and to hope that others would take up that work. For sample statements, see CPA, A840/B868; Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, AK, 4:391; Critique of Practical Reason, AK, 5:90-1. Compare CPA, A15/B29, where Kant says that there may be a common root of the faculties that is unknown to us (uns unbekannt), but does not make the stronger claim that such a root is unknowable. Many post-Kantian idealists took these suggestions quite seriously, dividing roughly into three camps: one attempting to secure in a single principle the ground for all theoretical or representational faculties by stressing features of Kant's philosophy of mind (for example, Reinhold), others turning more particularly to the problem of the unity of practical and theoretical reason (for example, Fichte). Still others attempted systematization by focusing on the role assigned to imagination and reflection in the third Critique (for example, Schelling).
19. This sort of systematicity, the systematicity of concepts purportedly ordering nature or of nature itself, is quite different from another notion of systematicity at work in Kant and must not be confused with it. This other notion of systematicity pertains to the unity and structure of philosophical theories and, in particular, theories of the sort Kant puts forward. The principles Kant enumerates and thinks required for systematicity in the first sense do not figure in his account of systematicity in the second sense. In point of fact, Kant never worked out in any detail an account of systematicity of philosophical theory. His rather general statements on this issue were intended to announce a general desideratum that was, in its day, anodyne (that is, that philosophical theories should be systematic), to indicate in very broad stroke how that systematicity might be effected (by grounding the various faculties, and especially the two aspects of reason in one principle [Grundsatz]), and to hope that others would take up that work. For sample statements, see CPA, A840/B868; Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, AK, 4:391; Critique of Practical Reason, AK, 5:90-1. Compare CPA, A15/B29, where Kant says that there may be a common root of the faculties that is unknown to us (uns unbekannt), but does not make the stronger claim that such a root is unknowable. Many post-Kantian idealists took these suggestions quite seriously, dividing roughly into three camps: one attempting to secure in a single principle the ground for all theoretical or representational faculties by stressing features of Kant's philosophy of mind (for example, Reinhold), others turning more particularly to the problem of the unity of practical and theoretical reason (for example, Fichte). Still others attempted systematization by focusing on the role assigned to imagination and reflection in the third Critique (for example, Schelling).
20. CPR, A653-4/B681-2.
21. Unlike the principle of homogeneity; however, the principle of specification does not complete its work in a final set of indivisible species. The downward ordering of concepts by reason does not cease because Kant does not believe that a species can, or should, consist of an individual (CPR, A655, 658/B683, 686). See Paul Guyer, "Reason and Reflective Judgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity," Nous 24 (1990): 30. Viewed in terms of a species, what might seem individual must, as a matter of methodology, always be further divisible. See also Jäsche Logik §11, AK, 9:97. The Remark to §11 elaborates, stating that even if there were individuals (and Kant concedes at CPR, A657/B685 that there are) in actual experience, the fact that there are may be a function of our lack of attention to further ways in which it is divisible. The point is both that (1) it is always conceptually possible to further divide what might seem to be an individual thereby making the indivividual into but anothef subdividable species and (2) that this possibility is methodologically sound, since it urges the understanding not to rest in its analytic endeavors.
22. Unlike the principle of homogeneity; however, the principle of specification does not complete its work in a final set of indivisible species. The downward ordering of concepts by reason does not cease because Kant does not believe that a species can, or should, consist of an individual (CPR, A655, 658/B683, 686). See Paul Guyer, "Reason and Reflective Judgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity," Nous 24 (1990): 30. Viewed in terms of a species, what might seem individual must, as a matter of methodology, always be further divisible. See also Jäsche Logik §11, AK, 9:97. The Remark to §11 elaborates, stating that even if there were individuals (and Kant concedes at CPR, A657/B685 that there are) in actual experience, the fact that there are may be a function of our lack of attention to further ways in which it is divisible. The point is both that (1) it is always conceptually possible to further divide what might seem to be an individual thereby making the indivividual into but anothef subdividable species and (2) that this possibility is methodologically sound, since it urges the understanding not to rest in its analytic endeavors.
23. Unlike the principle of homogeneity; however, the principle of specification does not complete its work in a final set of indivisible species. The downward ordering of concepts by reason does not cease because Kant does not believe that a species can, or should, consist of an individual (CPR, A655, 658/B683, 686). See Paul Guyer, "Reason and Reflective Judgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity," Nous 24 (1990): 30. Viewed in terms of a species, what might seem individual must, as a matter of methodology, always be further divisible. See also Jäsche Logik §11, AK, 9:97. The Remark to §11 elaborates, stating that even if there were individuals (and Kant concedes at CPR, A657/B685 that there are) in actual experience, the fact that there are may be a function of our lack of attention to further ways in which it is divisible. The point is both that (1) it is always conceptually possible to further divide what might seem to be an individual thereby making the indivividual into but anothef subdividable species and (2) that this possibility is methodologically sound, since it urges the understanding not to rest in its analytic endeavors.
24. Unlike the principle of homogeneity; however, the principle of specification does not complete its work in a final set of indivisible species. The downward ordering of concepts by reason does not cease because Kant does not believe that a species can, or should, consist of an individual (CPR, A655, 658/B683, 686). See Paul Guyer, "Reason and Reflective Judgment: Kant on the Significance of Systematicity," Nous 24 (1990): 30. Viewed in terms of a species, what might seem individual must, as a matter of methodology, always be further divisible. See also Jäsche Logik §11, AK, 9:97. The Remark to §11 elaborates, stating that even if there were individuals (and Kant concedes at CPR, A657/B685 that there are) in actual experience, the fact that there are may be a function of our lack of attention to further ways in which it is divisible. The point is both that (1) it is always conceptually possible to further divide what might seem to be an individual thereby making the indivividual into but anothef subdividable species and (2) that this possibility is methodologically sound, since it urges the understanding not to rest in its analytic endeavors.
25. CPR, A657-8/B685-6.
26. Kant thinks that the match between a system of concepts and a system of nature requires several further assumptions about purposiveness and God. Although this further assumption receives a much fuller treatment in the Critique of Judgment, the requirement that we treat nature as the thought-product of a divine being is already present in the first Critique. The core idea seems to be that it would be repugnant to reason to suppose that nature's amenability to rational ordering could arise through the operation of mechanical law - that nature's structure just happens to coincide with the demands of reason. Kant's introduction of the idea of an artificer of nature into the account of systematicity in the first Critique explains the alternative way he expresses the same principle in the two Introductions to the Critique of Judgment. The stipulation that nature both be viewed as systematic and as the product of rational agency is equivalent to the claim that nature be viewed as designed for our judgment or, in Kant's terminology, as purposive (zweckmäßig) (AK, 20:202, 214-16). Any complete analysis of Kant's conception of systematicity would have to treat in detail the role of the idea of purposiveness. I cannot hope to do that here.
27. CPR, A660/B688.
28. The constitutive/regulative distinction occurs in two places in the first Critique - in the Appendix to the Dialectic and in Kant's discussion of the Analogies of Experience (A179-80/B222). In the Analogies, the distinction involves whether something is constitutive or regulative only with respect to intuition. In the Dialectic, the distinction applies to experience in general.
29. The distinction between a regulative transcendentally necessary principle and a constitutive transcendentally necessary principle rests on the idea that a rule or principle (or its assumption) may be necessary for some higher-order cognitive tasks, yet not required for basic ones (for instance, unifying intuitions under concepts). So, the denomination of the principle of systematicity as transcendentally necessary need not cause alarm in itself. Nevertheless, certain passages in the Critique might be read in support of the view that "transcendentally necessary" means "constitutive." For instance, in §7 of the Introduction Kant defines transcendental as "all knowledge that involves, not so much objects, as the mode of our knowledge of objects, insofar as this mode of knowledge is possible a priori" (A11/B25). And, at the outset of the Transcendental Logic Kant holds that an a priori relation to objects is the "mark of the transcendental" (B80). As we have seen, ideal principles have no direct a priori relation to objects - they order concepts of objects - and would be excluded from being considered transcendentally necessary under this specification. Further support for the contention that the terms "transcendentally necessary" and "constitutive" are synonyms could be gleaned from the fact that Kant can be read at times to disallow the principle of systematicity transcendental status. For instance, Kant states that the principles of homogeneity, specificity, and affinity merely "seem to be transcendental (A663/B691). He also disavows the notion that they can be given a truly transcendental deduction, although he later attempts to give sense to another sort of proof they might be given (A669-70/B697-8). I find these passages rather circumstantial and believe that the idea that the terms "transcendental" and "transcendentally necessary" have univocal senses implausible. Rolf-Peter Horstmann argues that the category of transcendentally necessary, yet regulative, principles is not grounded until the third Critique. See "Why Must There Be a Transcendental Deduction in Kant's Critique of Judgment?" in Kant's Transcendental Deductions: The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus postumum,' ed. E. Förster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 170-1. I agree that Kantian doctrine would require that all transcendentally necessary principles receive a deduction (whether regulative or constitutive) and that Kant does not provide a deduction for the principle of systematicity in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the first Critique. But Kant never discharges this debt. Although he provides a deduction in the third Critique for judgments of taste (that is, aesthetic reflective judgments), Kant does not do so for reflective judgment tout court.
30. The picture just set out is greatly complicated by Kant's statement that the maximal systematicity of nature requires nature to be thought of as organized according to final causes. He writes: "The highest formal unity, which rests solely on concepts of reason, is the purposive unity of things. The speculative interest of reason makes it necessary to view all order in the world as if it had sprouted from the intent of a supreme reason (als ob sie aus der Absicht einer allerhöchsten Vernunft entsprossen wäre). Such a principle opens out to our reason, as applied to the field of experience, entirely new views concerning how the things of the world are connected according to teleological laws and thereby attain their greatest systematic unity. The assumption of a supreme intelligence, as the sole cause of the universe, to be sure, in the idea alone, can therefore always benefit and never injure reason" (CPR, A686-7/B714-15). Moreover, Kant believes that conceiving of nature in general as being organized teleologically implicates thinking of it as the creation of an "all-embracing being, . . . the supreme and all-sufficient cause" (CPR, A686/B714) who would possess an intellectus archetypus (compare CPR, B138-9; Letter to Herz of February 21, 1772, AK, 10:130-1). Kant's pronouncements on the requirement of purposiveness (and of conceiving of nature as the product of God) in the first Critique are resounding, unfortunately his reasons for thinking that a purposiveness requirement must supplement that of systematicity remain seriously underdeveloped there. Moreover, Kant's description of the requirement as one demanded by the requirement for the unity of nature as a system can be misleading. Clearly the idea of a single supersensible ground for nature does not in itself insure that nature is any more systematic than it would be unified only under a natural law, if what is at issue is the deductive interrelationship of physical laws. A unified physical theory is thinkable without presupposing the existence of God. Nor does the fact that Kant thinks some natural beings require teleological explanations warrant the consideration of nature as a whole as purposively organized, although he remarks at A686/B714 that PS supplemented with the idea of purposive unity "opens out to our reason . . . entirely new views concerning how the things of the world are connected according to teleological laws and thereby attain their greatest systematic unity." It is true that a science that did not have teleological explanation at its disposal would not be able to account for living objects and that their lack of inclusion into the overall theory of nature would prevent its maximal systematicity. But the integration of biological objects into the overall theory can be achieved by limited application of teleogical explanation (that is, to the localities in which it is demanded) and does not require that nature itself be teleological. The best explanation for the requirement that nature as a whole be considered as composed of ends is that the notion of nature that is so constituted provides for the unity of theoretical and practical reason.
31. The picture just set out is greatly complicated by Kant's statement that the maximal systematicity of nature requires nature to be thought of as organized according to final causes. He writes: "The highest formal unity, which rests solely on concepts of reason, is the purposive unity of things. The speculative interest of reason makes it necessary to view all order in the world as if it had sprouted from the intent of a supreme reason (als ob sie aus der Absicht einer allerhöchsten Vernunft entsprossen wäre). Such a principle opens out to our reason, as applied to the field of experience, entirely new views concerning how the things of the world are connected according to teleological laws and thereby attain their greatest systematic unity. The assumption of a supreme intelligence, as the sole cause of the universe, to be sure, in the idea alone, can therefore always benefit and never injure reason" (CPR, A686-7/B714-15). Moreover, Kant believes that conceiving of nature in general as being organized teleologically implicates thinking of it as the creation of an "all-embracing being, . . . the supreme and all-sufficient cause" (CPR, A686/B714) who would possess an intellectus archetypus (compare CPR, B138-9; Letter to Herz of February 21, 1772, AK, 10:130-1). Kant's pronouncements on the requirement of purposiveness (and of conceiving of nature as the product of God) in the first Critique are resounding, unfortunately his reasons for thinking that a purposiveness requirement must supplement that of systematicity remain seriously underdeveloped there. Moreover, Kant's description of the requirement as one demanded by the requirement for the unity of nature as a system can be misleading. Clearly the idea of a single supersensible ground for nature does not in itself insure that nature is any more systematic than it would be unified only under a natural law, if what is at issue is the deductive interrelationship of physical laws. A unified physical theory is thinkable without presupposing the existence of God. Nor does the fact that Kant thinks some natural beings require teleological explanations warrant the consideration of nature as a whole as purposively organized, although he remarks at A686/B714 that PS supplemented with the idea of purposive unity "opens out to our reason . . . entirely new views concerning how the things of the world are connected according to teleological laws and thereby attain their greatest systematic unity." It is true that a science that did not have teleological explanation at its disposal would not be able to account for living objects and that their lack of inclusion into the overall theory of nature would prevent its maximal systematicity. But the integration of biological objects into the overall theory can be achieved by limited application of teleogical explanation (that is, to the localities in which it is demanded) and does not require that nature itself be teleological. The best explanation for the requirement that nature as a whole be considered as composed of ends is that the notion of nature that is so constituted provides for the unity of theoretical and practical reason.
32. The picture just set out is greatly complicated by Kant's statement that the maximal systematicity of nature requires nature to be thought of as organized according to final causes. He writes: "The highest formal unity, which rests solely on concepts of reason, is the purposive unity of things. The speculative interest of reason makes it necessary to view all order in the world as if it had sprouted from the intent of a supreme reason (als ob sie aus der Absicht einer allerhöchsten Vernunft entsprossen wäre). Such a principle opens out to our reason, as applied to the field of experience, entirely new views concerning how the things of the world are connected according to teleological laws and thereby attain their greatest systematic unity. The assumption of a supreme intelligence, as the sole cause of the universe, to be sure, in the idea alone, can therefore always benefit and never injure reason" (CPR, A686-7/B714-15). Moreover, Kant believes that conceiving of nature in general as being organized teleologically implicates thinking of it as the creation of an "all-embracing being, . . . the supreme and all-sufficient cause" (CPR, A686/B714) who would possess an intellectus archetypus (compare CPR, B138-9; Letter to Herz of February 21, 1772, AK, 10:130-1). Kant's pronouncements on the requirement of purposiveness (and of conceiving of nature as the product of God) in the first Critique are resounding, unfortunately his reasons for thinking that a purposiveness requirement must supplement that of systematicity remain seriously underdeveloped there. Moreover, Kant's description of the requirement as one demanded by the requirement for the unity of nature as a system can be misleading. Clearly the idea of a single supersensible ground for nature does not in itself insure that nature is any more systematic than it would be unified only under a natural law, if what is at issue is the deductive interrelationship of physical laws. A unified physical theory is thinkable without presupposing the existence of God. Nor does the fact that Kant thinks some natural beings require teleological explanations warrant the consideration of nature as a whole as purposively organized, although he remarks at A686/B714 that PS supplemented with the idea of purposive unity "opens out to our reason . . . entirely new views concerning how the things of the world are connected according to teleological laws and thereby attain their greatest systematic unity." It is true that a science that did not have teleological explanation at its disposal would not be able to account for living objects and that their lack of inclusion into the overall theory of nature would prevent its maximal systematicity. But the integration of biological objects into the overall theory can be achieved by limited application of teleogical explanation (that is, to the localities in which it is demanded) and does not require that nature itself be teleological. The best explanation for the requirement that nature as a whole be considered as composed of ends is that the notion of nature that is so constituted provides for the unity of theoretical and practical reason.
33. The picture just set out is greatly complicated by Kant's statement that the maximal systematicity of nature requires nature to be thought of as organized according to final causes. He writes: "The highest formal unity, which rests solely on concepts of reason, is the purposive unity of things. The speculative interest of reason makes it necessary to view all order in the world as if it had sprouted from the intent of a supreme reason (als ob sie aus der Absicht einer allerhöchsten Vernunft entsprossen wäre). Such a principle opens out to our reason, as applied to the field of experience, entirely new views concerning how the things of the world are connected according to teleological laws and thereby attain their greatest systematic unity. The assumption of a supreme intelligence, as the sole cause of the universe, to be sure, in the idea alone, can therefore always benefit and never injure reason" (CPR, A686-7/B714-15). Moreover, Kant believes that conceiving of nature in general as being organized teleologically implicates thinking of it as the creation of an "all-embracing being, . . . the supreme and all-sufficient cause" (CPR, A686/B714) who would possess an intellectus archetypus (compare CPR, B138-9; Letter to Herz of February 21, 1772, AK, 10:130-1). Kant's pronouncements on the requirement of purposiveness (and of conceiving of nature as the product of God) in the first Critique are resounding, unfortunately his reasons for thinking that a purposiveness requirement must supplement that of systematicity remain seriously underdeveloped there. Moreover, Kant's description of the requirement as one demanded by the requirement for the unity of nature as a system can be misleading. Clearly the idea of a single supersensible ground for nature does not in itself insure that nature is any more systematic than it would be unified only under a natural law, if what is at issue is the deductive interrelationship of physical laws. A unified physical theory is thinkable without presupposing the existence of God. Nor does the fact that Kant thinks some natural beings require teleological explanations warrant the consideration of nature as a whole as purposively organized, although he remarks at A686/B714 that PS supplemented with the idea of purposive unity "opens out to our reason . . . entirely new views concerning how the things of the world are connected according to teleological laws and thereby attain their greatest systematic unity." It is true that a science that did not have teleological explanation at its disposal would not be able to account for living objects and that their lack of inclusion into the overall theory of nature would prevent its maximal systematicity. But the integration of biological objects into the overall theory can be achieved by limited application of teleogical explanation (that is, to the localities in which it is demanded) and does not require that nature itself be teleological. The best explanation for the requirement that nature as a whole be considered as composed of ends is that the notion of nature that is so constituted provides for the unity of theoretical and practical reason.
34. The claim is particularly clear in §§2 and 4 of the First Introduction to the third Critique. See AK, 20:203 and 208-11.
35. I owe this example to Gerd Buchdahl.
36. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
37. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
38. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
39. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
40. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
41. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
42. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the
43. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
44. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
45. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
46. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
47. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
48. Kant says as much in both editions of the Deduction. In the first edition, he writes "indeed, empirical laws as such in no manner can derive their origin from pure understanding" (CPR, A127) and reiterates the point, perhaps a bit less clearly, in the second edition: "particular laws, because they concern appearances which are empirically determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they are, all in one, subject to them" (CPR, B165, emphasis in original). For Lovejoy's version (with the pendant charge that Kant cribbed his argument from Wolff), see "On Kant's Reply to Hume," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 6 (1906): 380-407. For Strawson's version, see The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 137. For correction of these views, see, for example, Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 232-4; James Van Cleve, "Four Recent Interpretations of Kant's Second Analogy," Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 84 (Strawson assumes for Kant the status of empirical idealist); Lewis White Beck, "Once More unto the Breach: Kant's Answer to Hume Again," in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 130-5; "A Non-Sequitur of Numbing Crossness?" in ibid., 147-53; Arthur Melnick, Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 85-94. There have been recent attempts to reestablish something along the lines of a Lovejoy/Strawson position. Most notable is what might be called the deductivist view of empirical law, proposed by Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-64; "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99. Friedman argues on the basis of certain passages in the phenomenology chapter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that empirical laws are deduced from fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, which principles are generated by a process of taking the categories and specifying them for a Newtonian world. This specification involves construing each category in question in terms of the concept of matter. See "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Science," 184-5. The problem with this view, at least to the extent that it seeks to disenfranchise systematicity as the ultimate source for the necessitarian character of empirical laws, is that "matter" is an empirical concept (as Friedman admits), whose possibility cannot be accounted for absent the assumption of systematicity. Of course, it can be that Kant thought this deductive procedure, coupled with the assumption of systematicity, provided a strong account of the necessity of otherwise contingent laws, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that the process that Friedman describes requires at its outset a concept which can only be the deliverance of an operation of the principles of systematicity. A further point. Even if it is granted that the existence of causal laws follows directly from the causal principle, that does nothing to secure the possiblity of the discovery of laws as laws (or of their character as necessary). It is entirely consistent with the dictates of the causal principle that the world consist in what one might term "singleton laws" - that is, laws of one instance and, therefore, laws that cannot be recognized as laws. I am not sure that Kant would countenance the idea of a one-instance law, but the causal principle itself does not rule out their possibility.
49. CPR, A159/b198
50. CPR, A653-4/B681-2.
51. Compare this passage to one in "Funes the Memorious," where Borges writes of the title character: "He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of ideas of a general, Platonic sort. Not only was it difficult for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him that the dog at three-fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from the front). His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him every time he saw them. Swift relates that the emperor of Lilliput could discern the movement of the minute hand; Funes could continuously discern the tranquil advances of corruption, of decay, of fatigue. He could note the progress of death, of dampness. He was the solitary and lucid spectator of a multiform, instantaneous and almost intolerably precise world. . . . I suspect that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences, generalize, to make abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, immediate in their presence"; Labyrinths, trans. James Irby (New York: New Directions, 1962), 65-6. Condemned by his inability to advance from instance to instance, Funes's world is devoid of classification, indeed of its very possibility, consisting entirely of singularities. Of course, a world of singularities is a contradiction in terms, unless each singularity corresponds to a world unto itself. This is part of the philosophical point of Funes's predicament and of Borges's tale: Funes can have no world, if a world must admit of plurality. Borges slyly hedges its bets on this score. He writes that Funes finds it difficult to comprehend the concept of a general term, not impossible. And Funes's hypersensitivity to the processes of generation and corruption of course presupposes the mental ability of passing from instance to instance. Of course Borges knows that it is impossible to describe this sort of "experience" and that is part of the irony.
52. Compare this passage to one in "Funes the Memorious," where Borges writes of the title character: "He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of ideas of a general, Platonic sort. Not only was it difficult for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him that the dog at three-fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from the front). His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him every time he saw them. Swift relates that the emperor of Lilliput could discern the movement of the minute hand; Funes could continuously discern the tranquil advances of corruption, of decay, of fatigue. He could note the progress of death, of dampness. He was the solitary and lucid spectator of a multiform, instantaneous and almost intolerably precise world. . . . I suspect that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences, generalize, to make abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, immediate in their presence"; Labyrinths, trans. James Irby (New York: New Directions, 1962), 65-6. Condemned by his inability to advance from instance to instance, Funes's world is devoid of classification, indeed of its very possibility, consisting entirely of singularities. Of course, a world of singularities is a contradiction in terms, unless each singularity corresponds to a world unto itself. This is part of the philosophical point of Funes's predicament and of Borges's tale: Funes can have no world, if a world must admit of plurality. Borges slyly hedges its bets on this score. He writes that Funes finds it difficult to comprehend the concept of a general term, not impossible. And Funes's hypersensitivity to the processes of generation and corruption of course presupposes the mental ability of passing from instance to instance. Of course Borges knows that it is impossible to describe this sort of "experience" and that is part of the irony.
53. AK, 20:211-12.
54. AK, 20:211n.
55. Guyer, 24.
56. CPR, A320/B377; AK, 9:92.
57. CPR, A320/B377; AK, 9:92.
58. AK, 9:92. Kant states that the phrase "general concept" is a pleonasm. See AK, 9:91 n. 2.
59. AK, 9:92. Kant states that the phrase "general concept" is a pleonasm. See AK, 9:91 n. 2.
60. Kant does not limit the necessity for these logical acts to forming empirical concepts - at least not specifically. Although all the examples of this process that Kant gives in both the lectures on logic and in the first Critique involve empirical concepts, he indicates that it is required for all concepts (eines jeden Begriffes überhaupt). See AK, 9:58.
61. See Jäsche Logik §6. Utilizing Kant's lectures as providing indications of his views is a potentially complex matter. There are three concerns that may attach to using the Jäsche Logik as a source for Kant's views on concept formation. First, Kant lectured using treatises prescribed by Prussian statute (except, for example, in physical geography, where no approved text existed). In the case of logic, the prescribed text was G. F. Meier's Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre (1747). Kant thought highly of the work, but was also critical of it, given that Meier was a Wolffian. In any of Kant's lectures, it is often not very easy to tell when Kant is merely repeating the doctrines of the prescribed text and where he is engaging them critically - and the logical works are no exception to this. Second, Kant's lectures are preserved in students' notes, sometimes by single students, known and unknown, and sometimes by a committee or group of students. It is nearly impossible to assess the accuracy of any one of the transcripts taken in isolation and, in general, the presumption is that students' notes can be inaccurate. Third, the Jäsche Logik is a distillation of Kant's lectures in logic of the early 1790's, prepared and published in 1800 under Kant's loose supervision and not a transcript of any one of Kant's lectures. Although this may tend to moot the second issue - the unreliability of student notes - it introduces an element of uncertainty in that Kant's supervision was slight and, to the extent it was given at all, was given by a man of waning mental acuity. Fortunately, Kant's analysis of concept formation is unchanged in its essentials from that contained in his lectures of the early 1780's - those contemporaneous with the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. See, for example, Wiener Logik at AK, 24:909. Given the univocal nature of Kant's comments on concept formation over two decades of lectures, there should be no hesitation in taking the Jäsche Logik as representative.
62. See Jäsche Logik §6. Utilizing Kant's lectures as providing indications of his views is a potentially complex matter. There are three concerns that may attach to using the Jäsche Logik as a source for Kant's views on concept formation. First, Kant lectured using treatises prescribed by Prussian statute (except, for example, in physical geography, where no approved text existed). In the case of logic, the prescribed text was G. F. Meier's Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre (1747). Kant thought highly of the work, but was also critical of it, given that Meier was a Wolffian. In any of Kant's lectures, it is often not very easy to tell when Kant is merely repeating the doctrines of the prescribed text and where he is engaging them critically - and the logical works are no exception to this. Second, Kant's lectures are preserved in students' notes, sometimes by single students, known and unknown, and sometimes by a committee or group of students. It is nearly impossible to assess the accuracy of any one of the transcripts taken in isolation and, in general, the presumption is that students' notes can be inaccurate. Third, the Jäsche Logik is a distillation of Kant's lectures in logic of the early 1790's, prepared and published in 1800 under Kant's loose supervision and not a transcript of any one of Kant's lectures. Although this may tend to moot the second issue - the unreliability of student notes - it introduces an element of uncertainty in that Kant's supervision was slight and, to the extent it was given at all, was given by a man of waning mental acuity. Fortunately, Kant's analysis of concept formation is unchanged in its essentials from that contained in his lectures of the early 1780's - those contemporaneous with the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. See, for example, Wiener Logik at AK, 24:909. Given the univocal nature of Kant's comments on concept formation over two decades of lectures, there should be no hesitation in taking the Jäsche Logik as representative.
63. See Jäsche Logik §6. Utilizing Kant's lectures as providing indications of his views is a potentially complex matter. There are three concerns that may attach to using the Jäsche Logik as a source for Kant's views on concept formation. First, Kant lectured using treatises prescribed by Prussian statute (except, for example, in physical geography, where no approved text existed). In the case of logic, the prescribed text was G. F. Meier's Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre (1747). Kant thought highly of the work, but was also critical of it, given that Meier was a Wolffian. In any of Kant's lectures, it is often not very easy to tell when Kant is merely repeating the doctrines of the prescribed text and where he is engaging them critically - and the logical works are no exception to this. Second, Kant's lectures are preserved in students' notes, sometimes by single students, known and unknown, and sometimes by a committee or group of students. It is nearly impossible to assess the accuracy of any one of the transcripts taken in isolation and, in general, the presumption is that students' notes can be inaccurate. Third, the Jäsche Logik is a distillation of Kant's lectures in logic of the early 1790's, prepared and published in 1800 under Kant's loose supervision and not a transcript of any one of Kant's lectures. Although this may tend to moot the second issue - the unreliability of student notes - it introduces an element of uncertainty in that Kant's supervision was slight and, to the extent it was given at all, was given by a man of waning mental acuity. Fortunately, Kant's analysis of concept formation is unchanged in its essentials from that contained in his lectures of the early 1780's - those contemporaneous with the publication of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. See, for example, Wiener Logik at AK, 24:909. Given the univocal nature of Kant's comments on concept formation over two decades of lectures, there should be no hesitation in taking the Jäsche Logik as representative.
64. The ability to register a similarity holding between two things is not itself conceptual. It is a faculty that Kant variously names "judgment," "reflection," "wit" or "mother wit" (Mutterwitz). See, for example, CPR, A133/B172; Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, AK, 7:153. This is not a concept-deploying capacity. The point is that Kant conceives of the ability of mind to find similarities as an ingenium, not teachable or rule-governed.
65. The ability to register a similarity holding between two things is not itself conceptual. It is a faculty that Kant variously names "judgment," "reflection," "wit" or "mother wit" (Mutterwitz). See, for example, CPR, A133/B172; Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, AK, 7:153. This is not a concept-deploying capacity. The point is that Kant conceives of the ability of mind to find similarities as an ingenium, not teachable or rule-governed.
66. Kant sometimes refers to the entire process of concept formation as either "abstraction" (Anthropologie §3, AK, 7:23), or "reflection" (Reflexionen 2876 and 2878, AK, 16:555 and 557). In the second Remark to §6 of the Jäsche Logik Kant admonishes that the term "abstraction" is not always understood correctly: "We must not speak of abstracting something . . . , but rather of abstracting from something" (AK, 9:95 n. 2). What Kant seems to be warning against here is viewing abstraction as a process that yields a concept where there was not one before. In fact, in order to ward off potential misunderstandings, Kant advises that we talk of "abstracting concepts" (abstrahierende Begriffe) rather than abstract ones. By these remarks and others - as when he says that abstraction is merely the "negative condition for universal representation, or when he states that abstraction only provides the "enclosing of the concept within determinate limits" (AK, 9:95 n. 3) - Kant implies that once reflection has taken place and there exists a set of the noticed similarities of two objects, a concept is formed.
67. Kant sometimes refers to the entire process of concept formation as either "abstraction" (Anthropologie §3, AK, 7:23), or "reflection" (Reflexionen 2876 and 2878, AK, 16:555 and 557). In the second Remark to §6 of the Jäsche Logik Kant admonishes that the term "abstraction" is not always understood correctly: "We must not speak of abstracting something . . . , but rather of abstracting from something" (AK, 9:95 n. 2). What Kant seems to be warning against here is viewing abstraction as a process that yields a concept where there was not one before. In fact, in order to ward off potential misunderstandings, Kant advises that we talk of "abstracting concepts" (abstrahierende Begriffe) rather than abstract ones. By these remarks and others - as when he says that abstraction is merely the "negative condition for universal representation, or when he states that abstraction only provides the "enclosing of the concept within determinate limits" (AK, 9:95 n. 3) - Kant implies that once reflection has taken place and there exists a set of the noticed similarities of two objects, a concept is formed.
68. Kant sometimes refers to the entire process of concept formation as either "abstraction" (Anthropologie §3, AK, 7:23), or "reflection" (Reflexionen 2876 and 2878, AK, 16:555 and 557). In the second Remark to §6 of the Jäsche Logik Kant admonishes that the term "abstraction" is not always understood correctly: "We must not speak of abstracting something . . . , but rather of abstracting from something" (AK, 9:95 n. 2). What Kant seems to be warning against here is viewing abstraction as a process that yields a concept where there was not one before. In fact, in order to ward off potential misunderstandings, Kant advises that we talk of "abstracting concepts" (abstrahierende Begriffe) rather than abstract ones. By these remarks and others - as when he says that abstraction is merely the "negative condition for universal representation, or when he states that abstraction only provides the "enclosing of the concept within determinate limits" (AK, 9:95 n. 3) - Kant implies that once reflection has taken place and there exists a set of the noticed similarities of two objects, a concept is formed.
69. Kant sometimes refers to the entire process of concept formation as either "abstraction" (Anthropologie §3, AK, 7:23), or "reflection" (Reflexionen 2876 and 2878, AK, 16:555 and 557). In the second Remark to §6 of the Jäsche Logik Kant admonishes that the term "abstraction" is not always understood correctly: "We must not speak of abstracting something . . . , but rather of abstracting from something" (AK, 9:95 n. 2). What Kant seems to be warning against here is viewing abstraction as a process that yields a concept where there was not one before. In fact, in order to ward off potential misunderstandings, Kant advises that we talk of "abstracting concepts" (abstrahierende Begriffe) rather than abstract ones. By these remarks and others - as when he says that abstraction is merely the "negative condition for universal representation, or when he states that abstraction only provides the "enclosing of the concept within determinate limits" (AK, 9:95 n. 3) - Kant implies that once reflection has taken place and there exists a set of the noticed similarities of two objects, a concept is formed.
70. Kant sometimes refers to the entire process of concept formation as either "abstraction" (Anthropologie §3, AK, 7:23), or "reflection" (Reflexionen 2876 and 2878, AK, 16:555 and 557). In the second Remark to §6 of the Jäsche Logik Kant admonishes that the term "abstraction" is not always understood correctly: "We must not speak of abstracting something . . . , but rather of abstracting from something" (AK, 9:95 n. 2). What Kant seems to be warning against here is viewing abstraction as a process that yields a concept where there was not one before. In fact, in order to ward off potential misunderstandings, Kant advises that we talk of "abstracting concepts" (abstrahierende Begriffe) rather than abstract ones. By these remarks and others - as when he says that abstraction is merely the "negative condition for universal representation, or when he states that abstraction only provides the "enclosing of the concept within determinate limits" (AK, 9:95 n. 3) - Kant implies that once reflection has taken place and there exists a set of the noticed similarities of two objects, a concept is formed.
71. AK, 9:58.
72. Gerd Buchdahl first argued that the principle of systematicity was meant to fill a gap left by the transcendental underdetermination of empirical law. See "The Conception of Lawlikeness in Kant's Philosophy of Science," Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress (1972), 149-71; "The Kantian 'Dynamic of Reason' with Special Reference to the Place of Causality in Kant's System," in Kant Studies Today, ed. Lewis White Beck, (LaSalle: Open Court, 1969), 341-74; "The Relation between 'Understanding' and 'Reason' in the Architectonic of Kant's Philosophy," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 67 (1966-7): 209-26. For a more recent assessment, see Philip Kitcher, "Projecting the Order of Nature," in Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science, ed. Robert Butts (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), 201-35.
73. Gerd Buchdahl first argued that the principle of systematicity was meant to fill a gap left by the transcendental underdetermination of empirical law. See "The Conception of Lawlikeness in Kant's Philosophy of Science," Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress (1972), 149-71; "The Kantian 'Dynamic of Reason' with Special Reference to the Place of Causality in Kant's System," in Kant Studies Today, ed. Lewis White Beck, (LaSalle: Open Court, 1969), 341-74; "The Relation between 'Understanding' and 'Reason' in the Architectonic of Kant's Philosophy," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 67 (1966-7): 209-26. For a more recent assessment, see Philip Kitcher, "Projecting the Order of Nature," in Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science, ed. Robert Butts (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), 201-35.
74. Gerd Buchdahl first argued that the principle of systematicity was meant to fill a gap left by the transcendental underdetermination of empirical law. See "The Conception of Lawlikeness in Kant's Philosophy of Science," Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress (1972), 149-71; "The Kantian 'Dynamic of Reason' with Special Reference to the Place of Causality in Kant's System," in Kant Studies Today, ed. Lewis White Beck, (LaSalle: Open Court, 1969), 341-74; "The Relation between 'Understanding' and 'Reason' in the Architectonic of Kant's Philosophy," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 67 (1966-7): 209-26. For a more recent assessment, see Philip Kitcher, "Projecting the Order of Nature," in Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science, ed. Robert Butts (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), 201-35.
75. Gerd Buchdahl first argued that the principle of systematicity was meant to fill a gap left by the transcendental underdetermination of empirical law. See "The Conception of Lawlikeness in Kant's Philosophy of Science," Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress (1972), 149-71; "The Kantian 'Dynamic of Reason' with Special Reference to the Place of Causality in Kant's System," in Kant Studies Today, ed. Lewis White Beck, (LaSalle: Open Court, 1969), 341-74; "The Relation between 'Understanding' and 'Reason' in the Architectonic of Kant's Philosophy," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 67 (1966-7): 209-26. For a more recent assessment, see Philip Kitcher, "Projecting the Order of Nature," in Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science, ed. Robert Butts (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), 201-35.
76. I thank Rüdiger Bittner for emphasizing the connection to Goodman. Cf. supra note 21 on the possibility of one-instance laws.
77. Guyer, 29-30.
78. CPR, A121. In the first edition Deduction Kant begins his analysis by stating that our experience is ineluctably that of connected representations. This connectedness is not intuited (it does not come from features of the world independent of our modes of cognizing it), but rather is made. That is, connections between representations are accomplished by an activity of the understanding (A105). Now, in itself, this is just the acknowledgment that we have a certain empirical subjective capacity to reproduce appearances according to rules of association. This capacity, and these rules themselves, might be construed consistent with what we have thus far said (along Humean lines) as nothing but empirical in nature, although they might be also considered necessary for certain mental activities. Chief among these activities might be the application of empirical concepts. There is no way to form or apply such concepts, without the ability to combine representations according to rules. So, without more, there is no assurance that the combinations of representations according to these subjective rules will issue in objective experience. Without some way to insure that the manifold itself is associable in the ways we empirically associate representations, it would be merely accidental if it turned out to be the case that our connections of appearances were also objectively real. What Kant must show is that there is a ground for regarding all appearances as conforming to the rules for ordering representations issuing from the subject. The best discussion of affinity is still H. J. Paton, Kant's Metaphysic of Experience (London: Allen & Unwin, 1936), 1:367-71 and 446-9.
79. CPR, A121. In the first edition Deduction Kant begins his analysis by stating that our experience is ineluctably that of connected representations. This connectedness is not intuited (it does not come from features of the world independent of our modes of cognizing it), but rather is made. That is, connections between representations are accomplished by an activity of the understanding (A105). Now, in itself, this is just the acknowledgment that we have a certain empirical subjective capacity to reproduce appearances according to rules of association. This capacity, and these rules themselves, might be construed consistent with what we have thus far said (along Humean lines) as nothing but empirical in nature, although they might be also considered necessary for certain mental activities. Chief among these activities might be the application of empirical concepts. There is no way to form or apply such concepts, without the ability to combine representations according to rules. So, without more, there is no assurance that the combinations of representations according to these subjective rules will issue in objective experience. Without some way to insure that the manifold itself is associable in the ways we empirically associate representations, it would be merely accidental if it turned out to be the case that our connections of appearances were also objectively real. What Kant must show is that there is a ground for regarding all appearances as conforming to the rules for ordering representations issuing from the subject. The best discussion of affinity is still H. J. Paton, Kant's Metaphysic of Experience (London: Allen & Unwin, 1936), 1:367-71 and 446-9.
80. CPR, A121-2.
81. Ibid.
82. Both the doctrine of affinity and PS are present in the first edition of the Critique. One might argue that Kant's ommission of affinity from the second edition, while retaining PS, is evidence that Kant recognized a conflict between the two doctrines. There is no direct evidence to this effect and this sort of inference seems pretty speculative to me.
83. Compare Hannah Ginsborg, The Role of Taste in Kant's Theory of Cognition (New York: Garland, 1990), which forwards a similar proposal developed out of a very controversial interpretation of reflective judgment. For an alternative to Ginsborg's nonpsychologistic reading of reflective judgment, see my "The Harmony of the Faculties," Kant-Studien 91 (forthcoming, 2001).
84. Compare Hannah Ginsborg, The Role of Taste in Kant's Theory of Cognition (New York: Garland, 1990), which forwards a similar proposal developed out of a very controversial interpretation of reflective judgment. For an alternative to Ginsborg's nonpsychologistic reading of reflective judgment, see my "The Harmony of the Faculties," Kant-Studien 91 (forthcoming, 2001).
85. AK, 5:187.
86. eάπτειν, "stitch together, sew." The Greek does not generally carry with it that connotation of arbitrary or piecemeal work that Kant emphasizes, even when used metaphorically to describe activities (such as planning murder) that require a fair degree of organized thought. See, for example, Odyssey 16.240-3. There is a distinct and well-known line of thought descending from Plato which treats rhapsodic thought as being piecemeal however. Kant's remarks implicate this strand of thought. It is interesting to note that the conclusion of Socrates' consideration of the problem of the rhapsode in Ion is a good deal less negative than it is usually taken to be. The conclusion is merely that the "eulogist of Homer" has no technē in virtue of which he is such a homeric eulogist (542b: TEXVIXOV jiegi 'O[ir|Qou èjiaivéTT|v) and this does not entail that there is no rhapsodic techneat all.
87. eάπτειν, "stitch together, sew." The Greek does not generally carry with it that connotation of arbitrary or piecemeal work that Kant emphasizes, even when used metaphorically to describe activities (such as planning murder) that require a fair degree of organized thought. See, for example, Odyssey 16.240-3. There is a distinct and well-known line of thought descending from Plato which treats rhapsodic thought as being piecemeal however. Kant's remarks implicate this strand of thought. It is interesting to note that the conclusion of Socrates' consideration of the problem of the rhapsode in Ion is a good deal less negative than it is usually taken to be. The conclusion is merely that the "eulogist of Homer" has no technē in virtue of which he is such a homeric eulogist (542b: TEXVIXOV jiegi 'O[ir|Qou èjiaivéTT|v) and this does not entail that there is no rhapsodic techneat all.
88. eάπτειν, "stitch together, sew." The Greek does not generally carry with it that connotation of arbitrary or piecemeal work that Kant emphasizes, even when used metaphorically to describe activities (such as planning murder) that require a fair degree of organized thought. See, for example, Odyssey 16.240-3. There is a distinct and well-known line of thought descending from Plato which treats rhapsodic thought as being piecemeal however. Kant's remarks implicate this strand of thought. It is interesting to note that the conclusion of Socrates' consideration of the problem of the rhapsode in Ion is a good deal less negative than it is usually taken to be. The conclusion is merely that the "eulogist of Homer" has no technē in virtue of which he is such a homeric eulogist (542b: TEXVIXOV jiegi 'O[ir|Qou èjiaivéTT|v) and this does not entail that there is no rhapsodic techneat all.