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Reality and the Problem of Access
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
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Deep beneath the surface of Kant's theory of knowledge lies the metaphysical doctrine of noumena, things in themselves, intelligible entities. For lengthy periods these creatures are surprisingly unobtrusive and can be safely disregarded. But at certain points Kant hauls them to the surface and tries to put them to work in perplexing ways. My concern is not with these attempts, but with what can be learned, if not salvaged, from the metaphysical doctrine as it is expounded in the chapter in the Critique of Pure Reason entitled ‘The Ground of the Distinction of all Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena’. I shall start by giving, for the most part in Kant's own words, as blunt an account as possible of how he appears to reduce his own doctrine to nonsense. I shall then argue that such an account, while not straightforwardly wrong, ignores matters of very great interest. I shall do so in terms of two theories, which I distinguish, about the relationship between knowing, changing and conceptualizing. Finally, I shall draw some more and less general conclusions.
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References
1 Kant intends these different terms to mark different features, or aspects, of reality's substrate as it obliquely relates to the experiencing subject. But he is not consistent in his usage, and for the purpose of this paper the distinctions he intends can be ignored.
2 C.Pu.R., B 306 (Kemp Smith translation, pp. 266–267). All references are to Kemp Smith (1961). Except where otherwise stated italics appear in that translation.
3 Ibid., 267.
4 B 307, p. 268.
5 B 309, p. 270
6 B 252, p. 269.
7 B 250, p. 267.
8 B 307, p. 268.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 B 311, p. 272.
12 I cannot here give anything resembling an exhaustive account of what Kant supposes the ‘requisite(s) for the knowledge of an object’ to be. To do so would involve coping with a sub-doctrine of secondary instruments of change, concerning the synthesizing of the manifold of intuition by the imagination. Fortunately there is no need to get caught up in these wheels within wheels.
13 As yet, it is unclear either that it does or that it does not. I return to this below.
14 A 256, p. 272. See also B 298, A 239, B 307, B 309, A 251, A 255, B 311–313.
15 For an unusually sharp statement of the distinction made on view (2) see A 296, p. 299.
16 p. 268; italics of final clause my own. Kant's denials of intelligibility are mainly found in the B edition and his affirmations and refusals to be drawn in the A edition.
17 B 311–312, A 256, pp. 272–273. My italics.
18 A 252, p. 270.
19 B 314, p. 275. This line of argument should not detain us, though. To say that it is logically impossible to know whether or not something is a logical possibility is to declare against it.
20 A 250, p. 267.
21 The Phenomenology of Mind, A III, 2(a) (Baillie translation, p. 192).
22 The weave of the argument can at this point be coarsened by threads which, though found in Kant's pages, are just not wanted. An exhaustive treatment of view (1) would be a very cluttered one, and this I try to avoid.In particular, I do not explore the possibility of revising, perhaps radically, Kant's account of the relationship between sensibility and understanding.
23 B XVII, p. 22. We have to remember that Kant's remark, and indeed his entire Copernican manifesto, is couched in pre-Copernican terms–the very terms whose intelligibility the Copernican Revolutionary calls into question. Kant's wavering espousal of things in themselves is the clearest indication that he cannot commit himself whole-heartedly to a revolution for which he is ultimately responsible. The investigation, and ultimate rejection, of both views (1) and (2) may be seen as a modest furtherance of the Revolution. (See my ‘Professor Schwyzer's Entitlement Question’, The Philosophical Quarterly, July 1974.)
24 Zettel, 262; p. 48e (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1967). The italics are in the original.
25 I use Wittgenstein's expression, but that is not essential. The revised condition is gross indeed, but there is no call here to refine and elaborate it. I must emphasize that I am not arguing (and would not argue) that no one way of conceptualizing the world can be better or worse than another–partly because I am not sure what such a belief means. I intend no more than the claim that, in Nietzsche's words, ‘the ”real world”, however one has hitherto conceived it... has always been the apparent world once again'. (The Will to Power, 566; Kaufmann-Hollingdale translation, p. 305. Italics in original.)
26 In view of the actual variety of traditions and schools of thought I am embarrassingly aware of how irresponsible such a claim may seem. But traditions and schools may, surprisingly, converge.
27 So in order to know reality one would have to be reality (see in this connection Hegel's attack in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences on Jacobi's notion of ‘direct intuition’ or ‘immediate knowledge’).
28 At any rate, seductive to the present writer, who elsewhere has written at greater length about the issues touched upon in the concluding section.