I haven’t been getting out much, but last weekend I did manage to go to a party, and got talking to a woman I met there, mostly about Kant. We argued with vehemence and gesticulation: she was of the opinion that all of Kant’s theories were BULLSHIT because he said that even space and time were merely constructs of the human mind and thus not actually real. I found this to be both a serious oversimplification and gross misunderstanding, although because she was one of the hosts I did not use those words. My own over-simplistic understanding of Kant’s metaphysics is that the business about space and time being constructs of the human mind is mostly an epistemological point: that the “true nature” of the universe is ultimately unknowable because, although we perceive things spatiotemporally, we cannot know that our perceptions are accurate. This does not rule out the possibility that our perceptions are in fact accurate regarding the extension of objects in space and time; it simply means we cannot know for sure. (Or rather, more subtly but also more accurately: that we cannot understand our perceptions except through scema, such as space and time, which we introduce ourselves; but again this does not ultimately mean that they are somehow “inaccurate”.)
I’ve also been watching lots of Star Trek lately, which, like most sci-fi, has a tendency to play out weird ethical thought experiments. Viz.:
The captain always defends the deontological position; the first officer, the utilitarian.
(Drawing is from Hourly Comics Day, which I did not complete with enough pizzazz to share any but this.)
There are questions, of course, about the extent to which Kant’s metaphysics were important to his ethical theories, but I maintain that in the most important ways they are effectively separate. Kantian ethics can be effectively summed up in his Categorical Imperative, which is to “Act as if the maxim of your actions were a universal law” or various other effectively similar formulations. It is commonly dismissed for the somewhat ironic reason that it is often impossible to know the consequences of one’s actions. And of course for the impossibility of correctly formulating “maxims” by which one purports to act.
Meanwhile, at work, I have a copy of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice reserved for myself, so that if I ever get around to reading it all the way through, I can disagree with it more intelligently. In a nutshell, though, Rawls provides the last possibly defensible gasp for Social Contract Theory, via a thought experiment in which one is meant to defend the state which one would find most palatable even if one did not know which position one would hold within it. We are meant to hedge our bets, of course, because we want it to turn out that, even if we were the lowliest of the low, the society we “chose” when we were in the “original position” (from which one sets the parameters of the society) would not be so bad. It is a fine thought experiment, except for the conclusion that the obvious choice of society would be a liberal state. When I run the experiment in my own head, the society I imagine is an anarcho-socialist one.
I regret that you were of the opinion I was presenting an argument against Kant. My frank referral to Kant’s arguments as being ‘bullshit’ was my attempt to express my disinterest in discussing Kant, and any contradictory, armchair pondering nonsense for that matter.
“space and time were merely constructs of the human mind”
Kant does in fact assert that space and time (S&T) are constructs of the mind:
We therefore assert the empirical reality of space (with to all possible outer experience), though to be sure at the same time its transcendental ideality, i.e., that it is nothing as soon as we leave out the condition of the possibility of all experience, and take it as something that grounds the things in themselves (Kant 1781, 160).
Kant’s argument is as follows (although Kant runs the arguments separately for S&T they are virtually identical so I take the liberty to combine them):
(P1) We cannot imagine objects without S&T
(P2) S&T must be known a priori
(C) Therefore, S&T are constraints of our perceptions and not things-in-themselves
“and thus not actually real”
I did not claim that Kant suggested that S&T are not actually real. I suggested that Kant was a transcendental idealist and so believes reality just is a construct of our minds:
Time is certainly something real, namely the real form of inner intuition. It therefore has the subjective reality in regard to inner experience, i.e., I really have the representation of time and my determinations in it (Kant 1781, 165).
The distinction here is that Kant only holds that fundamental components of reality are constructed by the mind. He does allow for things-in-themselves. However, Kant suggests that we cannot know anything about these things (or possibly this thing), so it is beyond me where his dedication to the idea follows from. Where is his justification for positing its existence? The overall point is that Kant, when he discusses what count as constructions of the mind, just is referring to what we generally mean by reality. So I don’t think Kant wants to assert that S&T are not real, but that that their reality is constituted by our perception of them.
“This does not rule out the possibility that our perceptions are in fact accurate regarding the extension of objects in space and time; it simply means we cannot know for sure.”
Of course nothing is ruled out about what counts as a thing-in-itself, not even that they exist at all. We may as well be discussing whether an imperceptible tea-pot evolves the sun, whether God exists, or whether there really are fairies. These things-in-themselves do not count as reality by any usual understanding, however, so an appeal that space and time could be a part of reality and therefore real is a complete misunderstanding of the point. Kant thinks S&T are real, it’s just their reality are constituted by the mind (idealism).
However, Kant does assert that space is not related to things-in-themselves:
Space represents no property at all of any things in themselves nor any relation of them to each other, i.e., no determination of them that attaches to objects themselves and that would remain even if one were to abstract from all subjective conditions of intuition (Kant 1781, 159).
The transcendental concept of appearances in space, on the contrary, is a critical reminder that absolutely nothing that is intuited in space is a thing in itself, and that space is not a form that is proper to anything in itself, but rather that objects in themselves are not known to us at all, and that what we call outer objects are nothing other than mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose true correlate, i.e., the thing in itself, is not and cannot be cognized through them, but is also never asked after in experience (Kant 1781, 161-2).
And also with time:
…time is nothing other than the subjective condition under which all intuitions can take place in us (Kant 1781, 163).
If we abstract from our way of internally intuiting ourselves and by means of this intuition also dealing with all outer intuitions in the power of representation, and thus take objects as they may be in themselves, then time is nothing (Kant 1781, 164).
In this therefore consists the transcendental ideality of time, according to which it is nothing at all if one abstracts from the subjective conditions of sensible intuition, and cannot be counted as either subsisting or inhering in the objects in themselves (without their relation to our intuition) (Kant 1781, 164).
“Or rather, more subtly but also more accurately: that we cannot understand our perceptions except through scema, such as space and time, which we introduce ourselves; but again this does not ultimately mean that they are somehow “inaccurate”.”
The question of how accurate our understanding of S&T is is entirely beside the point. Kant thinks that nothing can be known except for how we perceive things, therefore we cannot know that things-in-themselves exist. All we can know is what is constituted by our experience. However, what he refers to as being constituted by mental states just is what we mean generally by reality. These things-in-themselves are meaningless. They certainly don’t refer to anything I mean by reality (seeing as they have zero positive properties).
One worrying consequence of idealism is that it leads to infallibilism, which actually is ironic, seeing as the assertion that we are fallible is what leads many people to idealist conclusions. To assert that reality is constituted by mental states just is to assert that reality just is what we think it is. The sense of how accurate it is just doesn’t come into it.
I refer to what is commonly known as the ‘worst argument in the world’ or ‘the gem’:
“We can know things only: as they are related to us;
under our forms of perception & understanding; in so far as they fall under our conceptual schemes etc.
Therefore,
We cannot know things as they are in themselves”
(Stove 1986, 2).
This is the argument Kant uses to lead to his transcendental idealist conclusion. He asserts that what we commonly mean by reality just is a construct of our minds and that things-in-themselves (whatever this means) is unknowable. So why he thinks he can assert (1) their existence or (2) that they do not contain S&T is beyond me.
If you would like further arguments against idealism it would be my pleasure.
Charlotte
Kant, I. 1781: Critique of Pure Reason. P. Guyer and A. Wood (eds.), New York: Cambridge University Press (1998).
Stove, D. 1986: ‘A Competition to Find the Worst Argument in the World’. University of Sydney. URL: http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/stoveworstargt.pdf
Hey, I’m sorry I’ve left you so long without a reply (having largely abandoned the whole project of writing things on the internet for the last few months), and to have evidently so grossly misunderstood (and thus misrepresented) your arguments here. I think perhaps I misjudged based on your replies to the arguments of some drunken boys who were mostly steering the conversation?
Anyway, I think we’re in agreement in characterizing Kant’s position on the existence of S&T as being constituted by our experience of them — and that the question of their “external reality” therefore becomes irrelevant. FWIW, I think his seeming denial of the existence of S&T outside of the self should be read more as a consequence of the irrelevance of that question within the schema, rather than an assertion about “external” reality per se.
The trouble is, I’m coming at the whole question from a perspective mostly shaped by and interested in the Philosophy of Perception, an area of enquiry whose whole endeavour can be characterized as an attempt to bat off (or in some cases nihilistically embrace) the terrifying epistemic solipsism implied by all forms of idealism. I.e., one of the primary concerns of that sub-field is whether and to what extent our perceptions can ever be said to be ‘veridical’ — to “map on” to things-in-themselves in a meaningful and truth-preserving way. And Kant’s arguments, while deeming this interest ‘irrelevant’, do have important implications for it, which must be either answered or overcome.
Thus, while I tend to waver in my opinions of Kant’s ontology, the epistemic implications — the ultimate unknowability of whether or not our perceptions “really” do “match” or “map on” to things-in-themselves — seems unavoidable. Rather like arguments for solipsism generally, I have yet to find a persuasive refutation. Even so, the world does seem to be filled with other beings whose perceptions of it seem to us to pretty much match our own perceptions of it (NB, and quite interestingly, not perfectly match — but close enough), and so the best response seems to be to accept the “ultimate” unknowability of the so-called external world, and move on to study what we can study about it.