Table Of ContentKANT'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
KANT'S THEORY OF
KNOWLEDGE
Selected Papers from the Third International Kant Congress
Edited by
LEWIS WHITE BECK
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT-HOLLAND / BOSTON-U .S.A.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-83006
ISBN-13:978-90-277-0S29-7 e-ISBN -13:978-94-01 0-2294-1
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-2294-1
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Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1974
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE VII
PART I
Aspects of Kant's Method in the Theory of Knowledge
EVA SCHAPER / Are Transcendental Deductions Impossible? 3
MARTIN J. SCOTT-TAGGART / The Ptolemaic Counter-
Revolution 12
PART II
Linguistic and Transcendental Themes
K.-O. APEL / From Kant to Peirce: The Semiotical Transformation
of Transcendental Logic 23
JUSTUS HARTNACK / B 132 Revisited 38
JOSEF SIMON / Phenomena and Noumena: On the Use and
Meaning of the Categories 45
PART III
Analytic and Synthetic Judgments
RICHARD AQUILA / Concepts, Objects and the Analytic in Kant 55
KONRAD CRAMER / Non-Pure Synthetic A Priori Judgments in the
Critique of Pure Reason 62
GERHARD KNAUSS / Extensional and Intensional Interpretation
of Synthetic Propositions A Priori 71
R. M. MAR TIN / On Kant, Frege, Analyticity and the Theory of
Reference 77
PART IV
Space
IVOR LECLERC / The Meaning of 'Space' in Kant 87
VI T ABLE OF CONTENTS
ROBER T PALTER / Absolute Space and Absolute Motion in
Kant's Critical Philosophy 95
ROBER TO TORRETTI / On the Subjectivity of Objective Space 111
PART V
Causality and the Laws of Nature
HENR Y E. ALLISON / Transcendental Affinity - Kant's Answer
to Hume 119
GERD BUCHDAHL / The Conception of Lawlikeness in Kant's
Philosophy of Science 128
RALPH C. S. WALKER / The Status of Kant's Theory of Matter 151
PART VI
The Thing in Itself
PETER KRAUSSER / Kant's Theory of the Structure of Empirical
Scientific Inquiry and Two Implied Postulates Regarding
Things in Themselves 159
RALF MEERBOTE / The Unknowability of Things in Themselves 166
NICHOLAS RESCHER / Noumenal Causality 175
PART VII
Kant and Some Modern Critics
J. N. FINDLA Y / Kant and Anglo-Saxon Criticism 187
MARGARET D. WILSON / On Kant and the Refutation of
Subjectivism 208
PREFACE
The Third International Kant Congress met in Rochester, New York,
March 30 to April 4, 1970. The Proceedings, published by D. Reidel
Publishing Company in 1972, contained 76 complete papers and 30 ab
stracts in three languages. Since this large volume covered many phases
of Kant's philosophy from a wide variety of standpoints, it is unlikely
that the entire contents of it will be of interest to anyone philosopher. I
have therefore selected from that volume the 20 papers that seem to me
to be most likely to be of interest to English-speaking philosophers who
are, to use a fairly vague description, in the 'analytical tradition'. The
topics treated here are those which are most relevant to current philosoph
ical debate in the theory of knowledge, philosophy of mind, and the
philosophy of science. The division of papers under the seven principal
topics, however, is in some respects a little arbitrary.
I hope this little volume, published 250 years after Kant's birth, will
show philosophers who are not already convinced that Kant is one of the
most contemporary of the great philosophers of the past. I believe that
the efforts of the authors of the papers will show that there can be genuine
Kantian contributions towards the solution of problems that have fre
quently been handled in opposition to, or obliviousness of, the eighteenth
century philosopher who did more than anyone else to formulate the
problems which still worry philosophers in the analytic tradition.
LEWIS WHITE BECK
PART I
ASPECTS OF KANT'S METHOD
IN THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
EVA SCHAPER
ARE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTIONS IMPOSSIBLE?
Professor Kornerl has recently argued very persuasively that transcen
dental deductions are logically impossible. If this were so, the detail of
Kant's Deduction need no longer occupy us. Such optimism I believe to
be misplaced.
Transcendental arguments exhibit the necessary presuppositions with
out which something we say, or want to be able to say, cannot be said
at all. Such arguments include, but need not be restricted to, arguments
eliciting the preconditions of conceptualizing experience in the way it is
conceptualized by us, the necessary preconditions of empirical inquiry
as we understand it. This formulation may not seem very close to Kant's
definition of the term 'transcendental', but I am assuming what I cannot
argue in detail now that Kant's central question "How are synthetic
a priori propositions possible?" requires at least an answer to the question
"What are the necessary conditions (if any) of our being able to speak
intelligibly about the world of our experience?", and that it is this re
quirement which gives Kant's question its primary significance. When
Kant insists, e.g., that the notion of describing experience presupposes
distinctions which are prior to any specific descriptive statement, he is
arguing transcendentally; in particular, when he distinguishes two basic
kinds of prior conditions, space-time and the categories, he is claiming
that a conceptual scheme adequate to the requirements of empirical
knowledge must enable us to do at least two things: to individuate and to
attribute.
If all transcendental arguments exhibited the conditions of concept
ualizing experience as it is in fact conceptualized by us, they might be
thought to be relatively unproblematic. Some of Kant's transcendental
arguments, however, make much stronger claims than those just outlined.
These arguments deal not merely with the conditions of making the
empirical claims we do make, but rather with the conditions of making
any intelligible claim at all about any conceivable kind of experience.
Kant argued for this stronger claim in what he considered his most
4 EVA SCHAPER
important transcendental argument, the Transcendental Deduction. A
transcendental deduction, then, is an argument which shows, or purports
to show, not only what the necessary features of a conceptual scheme are
which underpin (,makes possible') a given structure of experience, but
also that the conceptual scheme thus exhibited is based on specific
principles without which we could not think coherently about experience
at all. It is this larger claim which is problematic in a way the weaker
transcendental arguments are not.
Korner expresses something like the distinction I have sketched in this
way: a transcendental deduction is "a logically sound demonstration of
the reasons why a particular categorial scheme is not only in fact, but
also necessarily employed, in differentiating a region of experience" (318-
319). A deduction must then satisfy two conditions. (1) It must show that
a categorial scheme is "established," or can be established, i.e. that it
has or can have application, and (2) that it is unique. According to
Korner the first condition can be met, the second cannot logically be met.
It follows that transcendental deductions, as Korner defines them, are
impossible. Now though Korner's distinction between "establishing a
scheme" and "proving its uniqueness" reflects the distinction I drew, it
nevertheless leads to a misrepresentation of the relation between the two
claims in Kant's case, and this gives a distorted view of what can be
salvaged from the Critique if, according to Korner, we disallow transcen
dental deductions. But first I want to ask whether Korner, given his own
definition, does in fact prove that transcendental deductions are impos
sible.
If we are to entertain the possibility of the uniqueness of a particular
categorial scheme we must, of course, at least be able to ascertain that
it has application, or, as Korner puts it, we must be able to establish the
scheme. Statements about (a region of) experience presuppose that we
have the means of differentiating within that experience between objects
and their properties and relations. This is to have what Korner calls a
"method of differentiation." Such a method belongs to a categorial
scheme if and only if among the concepts exhibited by the scheme are,
firstly, some which are constitutive of it, i.e. tell us what is to count as an
object of experience. (This is Korner's condition of comprehensive appli
cability.) And, secondly, some which are individuating for those objects,
i.e. tell us the criteria by which in general one object is to be distinguished
ARE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTIONS IMPOSSIBLE? 5
from another. (This is Korner's condition of exhaustive individuation.)
A scheme is then said to be established when it has been shown that a
method of prior differentiation belongs to it.
In terms of these distinctions, in order to demonstrate the uniqueness
of a categorial scheme, we would have to show that every way of differen
tiating experience belongs to the scheme for which we are claiming unique
ness. It is this which Korner says is impossible. His strategy is to show
that all the abstractly possible methods of proving uniqueness must
logically fail. In fact, and rightly ignoring any vague appeals to "other
methods, e.g. some mystical insight or some special logic" (321), he
thinks there can only be three such methods:
(1) A comparison of the scheme with undifferentiated experience.
(2) A comparison of the scheme with possible competitors.
(3) An examination of the internal constitution of the scheme.
The first method is, of course, not one which Kant would have thought
possible, nor one which could in general plausibly suggest itself. For quite
apart from the question of uniqueness, it requires that we should be able
to think first of a pure experience untouched by any differentiation, and
no sense can be attached to such a supposition. What I want to point
out, however, is that it follows from Korner's definition of a categorial
scheme and how it is established that this method is incoherent. For we
cannot show uniqueness without establishing the scheme, and we cannot
do that unless some method of prior differentiation belongs to it. Now
this is a feature of Korner's discussion of the second method of proof also.
It follows immediately from his description of the second method - com
paring a scheme with possible competitors and finding the latter wanting
that this method is also bound to fail because it is self-contradictory. It
requires anyone who uses it to admit before the argument begins that
what he is trying to prove is false, otherwise he could not even try to
prove it. The reason is simply that a possible competitor is a scheme
which could be established by some method of differentiation and which
is yet not identical with the scheme whose uniqueness is supposed to be
demonstrable.
This argument prejudges the issue, however, and in a way which makes
suspect any attempt to show uniqueness of something on grounds which
involve the consideration of other claimants - a procedure which we do
not normally regard as vicious. It is true that transcendental deductions
