Jun 22

Jun 22 Digital Archaeology: Recovered Undergraduate Philosophy Paper: A Critique of Kant and the Modern Philosophers

With the help of Archive.org I was able to recover the following undergraduate philosophy paper that I wrote for the History of Modern Philosophy class that I took with Professor Philip Clayton at Sonoma State University during the Spring 1999 semester. For historical purposes I have left the paper as-is, typos and all.

A Critique of Kant and the Modern Philosophers

Zachary Fruhling
Sonoma State University
Spring 1999

For this paper I have chosen to take a position that lies between the view that Kant was unnecessarily skeptical and the view that he was precisely right, although I am forced to put my position much closer to the latter of the two views than to the former. In order to do this, I will first summarize Kant's position, after which I will critique this position in defense of my thesis. Then I will show what both my thesis and Kant's view would have to say regarding the philosophies of each of the philosophers covered this semester.

I shall now begin by presenting the views of Kant on the subject of Metaphysics and the limitations which, according to Kant, must be placed upon the types of knowledge that we can have. Kant begins by establishing four distinct types of statements: analytic a posteriori, analytic a priori, synthetic a posteriori, and synthetic a priori. I shall, before discussing the nature of those four types of statements, offer definitions of analytic, synthetic, a posteriori, and a priori as they are intended to be meant by Kant. An analytic statement is one in which the predicate of the statement is contained within the subject of that statement. A synthetic statement is one in which the predicate adds something to the subject of the statement. An a posteriori statement is one that is based upon experience; i.e. based on the senses. And finally, an a priori statement expresses something that is known prior to experience.

Given these definitions, I shall now discuss the four categories of statements introduced by Kant. Analytic a posteriori statements are not possible since an analyzation does not have anything to do with sense experience. Analytic a priori statements are those of definition; e.g. a bachelor is an unmarried man. Many people also consider mathematical statements, such as 7+5=12, to also fall into this category, however Kant disagrees with this assessment of mathematics because the predicate of a mathematical statement does indeed add something to the concepts which make up the subject of the expression. Synthetic a posteriori statements include both "truths" of science, and also anything that must be externally verified, and in the process of doing so adds new information than was previously possessed. Finally, synthetic a priori statements, which are the main focus of Kant's work, are those which are both genuinely informative and known by reflection alone.

Contrary to the common conception of mathematics, Kant shows that mathematical statements do indeed fall under the category of synthetic a priori statements. This can be illustrated by returning to the previous example, i.e. the statement 7+5=12. The subject of the expression, 7+5, contains 3 concepts: seven, five, and the operation of addition. Now the predicate, of which knowledge may be gained by reflection alone, contains a concept that is not contained within the subject of the statement, namely that of twelve. In addition to mathematical statements, Kant states that certain crucial scientific statements are also within the class of synthetic a priori statements.

One of the main foci of Kant's Prolegomena, which is the question of the existence of synthetic a priori statements, is crucial to the question of the possibility of any metaphysical knowledge. Should any metaphysical knowledge prove to be possible, any statement of it would naturally fall into this category. Thus, in order to reach a decision regarding the possibility of metaphysical knowledge, one must first discover the answer to the problem of the existence of synthetic a priori statements. By the existence of mathematical, geometrical, and certain scientific statements, one can show that this category of statements does indeed exist and is not an empty class.

Since it has been shown that synthetic a priori statements are possible, Kant proceeds to contemplate the true nature of a priori cognition. He states that all of human cognition, and consequently all a priori statements, exist in their present form because of the existence of necessary categories of understanding, which are unchanging and not culturally relative. While Kant gives a complete list of these categories, it will be sufficient for the purpose of this paper to use two of the most important ones as illustrations, namely space and time, and cause and effect. When one perceives an object as having spatial, temporal, or causal properties, he/she does not necessarily perceive the object as having those properties because those properties exist in the object itself. While that may or may not be the case, it could also be the case that one's perception of those qualities is simply a result of the placement of raw sense data into one of the categories of understanding. Only after such categorization does the sense data enter the world of human experience. The crucial implication of this statement is that there must necessarily exist raw sense data, which Kant calls the Nouminal realm, of which we can have no direct perception. Only after the sense data is placed into spatial, temporal, etc. categories will it enter the world of our experience.

Because the world of experience is necessarily subjective, objective sciences, either a priori or empirical, are possible only because a universal state of subjectivity has been reached in those areas. Stated differently, when subjective perception is universal due to the necessary categories of understanding, an objective reality is in fact perceived by those who are part of the universal subjectivity. This has profound consequences for philosophers, such as Descartes, for whom an objective reality is crucial to their philosophy. The lack of an absolute objective reality, at least in the world of human experience, along with his stipulation that the categories of understanding actually do exist, unlike what was claimed by Hume, are both things that set Kant apart from all of the philosophers that we have studied this semester.

In order to adequately defend Kant's view, I will compare his philosophy with that of each of the philosophers covered this semester independently, following which I will draw upon the content of those comparisons to defend my own conclusions about Kant's philosophy.

I shall begin with Descartes. Descartes believed it to be possible to form a complete metaphysical theory via a priori reflection and intuition alone. And while most of our class conceded that Descartes had discovered at least one piece of incontrovertible metaphysical knowledge, i.e. cogito ergo sum, it must also be noted that none of Descartes' a priori intuition escapes the confines of the categories of understanding to which a priori cognition is subject. It is impossible, according to Kant, to express any concept that does not conform in some way to some or all of the categories of understanding. Thus, if there exists a thing in itself, be it God, the soul, etc that does not per se fit into one of the categories of understanding, there will be no way to have any knowledge of that intrinsic nature. Descartes would not have been satisfied with the existence of such a nouminal realm due to his "clear and distinct" perception of metaphysical things that he had found to be indubitable because of the perfect and infinite nature of God, i.e. he is not a deceiver. However, what Descartes did not realize was that even his own clear and distinct was not necessarily a true reflection of the universe outside of his perception because of his own mind's inability to comprehend sense data without the aid of the categories of understanding.

In addition to Descartes' apparent oversight of the categories of his own understanding, it seems that the metaphysical knowledge, which Descartes had professed to be one hundred percent certain, is not in fact as informative as Descartes would have liked to believe it to be. At least in the first part of Descartes' Meditations, there is a similar skepticism to that of Kant, inasmuch as one has no true knowledge of things in themselves. The difference occurs in the resolution of this skepticism. Descartes refused to bow down to skepticism by his use of reason as an infallible way of intuiting the true nature of the entire universe. However, also given man's apparent lack of ability to comprehend anything beyond what can be placed within the categories of human understanding, it seems to follow that human reason can only lead to a certain type of knowledge, i.e. knowledge of the world of experience, and not to any level beyond that.

Descartes presupposes that he does in fact have the ability to comprehend fully at least one aspect of God, i.e. that he is perfect. However, seeing as how God in his true nature must necessarily exist in the nouminal realm, it seems to follow that the leg upon which Descartes' entire philosophy is built, i.e. the perfection of God, cannot ever be a true representation of God due to the mind's constant manipulation of the intrinsic qualities of things to fit within the necessary categories of human cognition. It seems, therefore, that Descartes is attempting, to use an idiom, to reach beyond his grasp in the matter of metaphysics. By refusing to acknowledge his mind's limitations he is in fact reaching conclusions which may be perfectly valid in the universally subjective world of experience, but are not true representation of the intrinsic nature of those metaphysical things. Therefore it seems that Kant has indeed overcome the rationalism of
Descartes and has brought him back into the world of experience, so to speak.

The next comparison that I will make is between Kant and Hobbes. Recalling Hobbes' assertion that everything that exists is simply a body in motion consisting of smaller bodies in motion, it seems that Hobbes is denying the existence of the nouminal realm from the very start. This denotes a fundamental difference in the philosophies of Kant and Hobbes. While Kant is content to state that things in themselves may possess qualities of which we cannot ever be truly aware, Hobbes begins the Leviathan with an absolute statement about the nature of bodies that can only be seen as having been meant to be seen as intrinsic. Thus, Hobbes may be considered to be the very picture of skepticism because he tosses aside the possibility of a deeper intrinsic nature than what may be perceived in an apparently arbitrary nature. Just as rationalism becomes a sort of meta-narrative to Descartes, skepticism is likewise a sort of meta-narrative to Hobbes. Of course, Hobbes is an empiricist, i.e. he believes that things are as they seem to the senses and there is no deeper metaphysical truth. However, by stating that all things are intrinsically simply bodies in motion, his entire philosophy rests entirely on that one assumption. Kant seems to me to be rather more cautious than Hobbes by saying that Hobbes may be right, but there is no way of knowing one way or the other. Had Hobbes amended his statement to read that it simply appears that all things are bodies in motion as seen from the filtered world of experience, it seems likely that Kant and Hobbes could in fact be reconciled together. By treating Hobbes' philosophy as having the ability to apply only to the world of understanding, rather than to the intrinsic nature of things in general, it seems that Kant would not have any quibble with the philosophy of Hobbes in that respect any longer. Of course, Hobbes, being an empiricist, simply dismisses the notion of anything metaphysical to begin with, making the true meaning of Hobbes' theory impossible to reconcile with that of Kant when taken in the manner in which Hobbes had meant it to be taken.

Thus it seems that Kant has taken a much stronger and safer position than that of Hobbes, and one which does not appear to rest on such an obvious assumption as Hobbes' assumption that all things are merely and intrinsically bodies in motion.

The next philosophy that I will compare to Kant's is that of Locke. Central to Locke's philosophy is the idea of intrinsic rights, which are, specifically, life, liberty, and property. By stating that such rights are indeed intrinsic, Locke is in direct opposition to Hobbes because of the metaphysical connotations associated with the existence of such rights. It is in this respect that Locke and Kant do seem to be in agreement; i.e. each believes there to be something deeper to objects than their surface features, unlike Hobbes. However, where Locke obviously thinks that it is indeed possible for one to gain insight into this fundamental nature and has formed his political theory accordingly, Kant would be forced to point out to Locke the limitations in the ability of the human mind to understand things that cannot fit into the categories of understanding. In fact, Kant's most serious objection to nearly all of the philosophers of his time is their unwillingness or inability to acknowledge the fact that their minds are "hardwired" to view things in certain patterns and categories. Given this acknowledgement, it seems that one would no longer have the ability to investigate into the nouminal realm as Descartes and the other rationalist philosophers had done, nor would the empiricist philosophers be able to simply dismiss the nouminal realm as nonexistent simply because their limited perception does not allow them to have any knowledge of it. This pattern having been established, let us move on to the other philosophies dealt with this semester.

Given the above observation about the fundamental problem that Kant has with all of the modern philosophers, it is little surprise to notice that the same difficulty arises when discussing Kant's philosophy as compared to that of Spinoza. Despite the fundamental differences in the way Spinoza and all the other rational philosophers that were discussed this semester viewed God and nature, the central problem that had arisen between the modernist philosophers and Kant still holds true in this case. I.e., given the acknowledgement of the inability of the mind to have true knowledge of things in themselves, it consequently becomes impossible for one to ever consider the universe as a whole because there may always exist the possibility of something existing that cannot be perceived as it really is due to the limited nature of the categories of human understanding. It seems that Spinoza, in response to this critique by Kant, would be forced to say that, regardless of the perception of the universe as a whole, the results of considering God as a metaphor for all of nature would still hold true. Thus, the results of Kant's philosophy may not even be pertinent or challenging to Spinoza's views. Admittedly, it is much more difficult for me to see how lack of true perception threaten the soundness of Spinoza's philosophy, especially when compared to the more fundamental differences that exist between the philosophies of Descartes, Hobbes, or Locke, and that of Kant. It seems to me that, although Spinoza's project was undoubtedly a modern one while Kant's was not, the two do not appear to be as obviously mutually exclusive as do the other philosopher's views and Kant's views. In fact, since Spinoza's goal was in fact to create an ethical theory, and Kant's goal was to create a theory of knowledge, it seems that Kant and Spinoza may in fact be complimentary to one another, rather than opposed.

And finally we come to David Hume, the philosopher who inspired much of the thought that resulted in Kant's Prolegomena. Hume was the supreme skeptic. Where Kant simply stated that cause and effect, space, time, etc. are not in objects themselves, Hume denied their existence completely. Just as Hobbes denied that objects have any metaphysical qualities whatsoever, it seems that Hume just as arbitrarily denies the existence of cause and effect, even just cause and effect viewed simply as a category of understanding. And just as similarly, the same shortcoming that was present in the philosophy of Hobbes is present in the philosophy of Hume. In a manner that is analogous to Descartes' cogito ergo sum argument, Kant reasons that cause and effect exist mainly on the basis that we are in fact experiencing them, and that to deny the world of human experience would be overly skeptical.

After comparing the views of Kant with those of each of the other philosophers that were studied this semester, I am forced to conclude that Kant was very nearly correct in his assessment of knowledge and its necessary limitations. I must also conclude that there is some value in the modern project in that it does provide a foundation for an absolute reality, even if it is one that we can never be completely aware of. It seems that such an absolute is necessary to Kant's philosophy because it provides the sense data that is to be categorized into the categories of understanding that allow our world of experience to exist. If a more skeptical view of Kant were to be taken, it seems that there would be no way for the world of experience to ever exist because of both the lack of immutable categories of understanding, and because of the lack of an absolute nature of the universe that feeds data into the categories of understanding. Consequently, it seems that Kant has presented what is perhaps the most elegant reconciliation of empiricism with rationalism of those that had previously been presented. As I stated above, however, I feel that the rationalist project has value to the world of experience, but I am forced to conclude that it has no value when looked at from an objective standpoint due to Kant's idea of objectivity as universal subjectivity. That, when combined with the supposed existence of a nouminal realm, seems to be enough to demonstrate the futility of the older modern project.