Hicks on Kant

Hicks on Kant
by Fred Seddon

Let me begin by seconding Tibor Machan’s enthusiastic endorsement of 'Explaining Postmodernism' by Stephen Hicks. I have read the book and loved it. But as Michelle Fram-Cohen has suggested, I have a few reservations on Stephen’s (I'm going to use Stephen’s first name since we are TOC colleagues and “intellectual history fanatics” which is how Stephen describes us in the dedication he wrote in my copy of his book) take on Kant. This paper will detail briefly those thoughts. Some of what I am going to say I have said elsewhere and I will refer to those writings when appropriate. So let me begin.

Most of what he has to say about good old Immanuel appears in chapter two from pages 23-42. He starts on p. 23 by providing a précis of the Enlightenment attitude to reason. It was positive. Reason was the means by which people could “know their world, plan their lives, and interact socially ..."

But Kant would certainly agree with this use of reason. Remember, Kant did not write a 'Critique of Everyday Reason.' He didn’t even write a 'Critique of Enlightenment Reason' or even a 'Critique of Scientific Reason.' He wrote a 'Critique of Pure Reason,' that is, reason considered apart from the evidence of the senses and he said, to oversimplify, that it was bad.

Hill makes the same point in his JARS article on Kant (Fall 2001).

It would be nice if Objectivism had a concept close to Kant’s notion of “pure reason.” The closest one I can think of, and it may not be all that close, is “floating abstraction.” Maybe we could rename Kant’s first Critique the 'Critique of Floating Abstractions,' three of them being God, cosmos and soul. (See the “Transcendental Dialectic.”)

So I conclude that Kant is not after the standard Enlightenment use of “reason” in his first Critique.

On p. 24 Stephen mentions Newton and Locke. But these guys don’t have clean hands; Newton was a mystic who wrote more on theology then he did on science. As for Locke, well, Rand somewhere describes his epistemology as a “disaster.” And he did call for the non-toleration of atheists and Catholics. And let’s not forget Thomas Jefferson. Remember, the answer to the question, Who owned black human beings, Jefferson or Kant? is Jefferson, not Kant. If we can “forgive” Jefferson for that egregious flaw, surely we can cut Kant some slack.

On p. 28 Stephen writes that Kant, “buttressed the pre-modern worldview of faith and duty against the inroads of the Enlightenment. . .” To which I say, “no way.” I have written on Kant on faith and it is available online in the 2003 TOC Summer Seminar participant section. That paper, by the way, also takes care of Stephen’s use on p. 25 of the favorite Objectivist quote from Kant, to wit; “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” Short version, Kant does not mean by “faith” the nasty thing Objectivists mean by that word. Anyway, see my paper for all the juicy details.

Back to p. 28. Stephen asks the following: “Is reason capable of knowing reality, or is it not? Is our rational faculty a cognitive function, taking its material from reality . . . or is it not?” Well Kant would answer “Yes.” As long as reason is operating on material provided by the noumenal (i.e., extramental) reality, then man can have knowledge. We only supply the form. But it is noumenal content that we “structure.” For more on what noumenal reality “gives” us, see chapter four from my 'Ayn Rand, Objectivists, and the History of Philosophy.'

On p. 29 Stephen writes, “Limited to knowledge of phenomena that it has itself constructed according to its own design, reason cannot know anything outside itself.” This can’t be a correct interpretation of Kant. Why does Kant name our faculty of perception “receptivity?” If we're constructing everything phenomenal, why does Kant constantly speak of objects being “given” to our senses. Given by what? There is no answer to this question on the “constructed according to its own design” interpretation.

Also on p. 29 (and p. 90--two for the price of one) we get Objectivism’s favorite quotation from Kant, to wit: “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” I will content myself to refer to my paper on this text that can be found at the TOC advanced seminar site for 2003. I have nothing to add at this time. (Maybe I should just post it on SOLO.) [Perhaps you should! -Ed]

After the reader reads my article he will then be in a position to understand that for Kant the use of the word “faith” is the opposite of its use by Objectivists or Kierkegaard. For both, faith is the opposite of reason and its enemy. (I read Kierkegaard and Rand as Tertullians, who said one must choose between faith and reason. Kierkegaard chose faith and Rand chose reason.)

If I’m right here, then the quotations from Kant and Kierkegaard on p. 90 in which they both use the word “faith” can be seen for what I think they are, viz., an equivocation. For Kant “faith” means “rational belief.” For Kierkegaard, it means the acceptance of the irrational.

On p. 30 Stephen lists five features of reason: “objectivity, competence, autonomy, universality and being an individual faculty,” and goes on to claim that, “Kant concluded that the sad experience of recent philosophy demonstrates that the most fundamental of them, objectivity, must be abandoned.”

What does history show us about the modern use, say from Descartes to Kant, of the term “objective” or “objectivity.” A check of my British Philosophy 1600-1900 data base which includes Locke’s Essay and the Two Treatises; Berkeley’s 'The Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher;
Six works by Hume, including the Treatise and the Enquiry -- shows neither the word “objectivity” nor the word “objective” appears even once.

When I look at the major works of Rationalists, the use of the phrase “objective reality” occurs 40 times, almost all (38 to be exact) of them in Descartes, but it means for him pretty much what we now mean by “subjective.” For Descartes, only ideas have “objective reality,” which means the ability of ideas to stand for something else, usually something that has “formal reality” which means what we normally mean by objective reality. In fact, although all other translators render the Latin “objective” with the English word “objective,’ Rubin uses “subjective” which is less misleading to a contemporary reader. So much for the big six.

[SIDE BAR: I did find the phrase “objective reality” in my British Philosophy 1600-1900 data base, but it is used by J. S. Mill and I think the reference to Kant should be obvious. The quotation is taken from chapter 3 of 'Utilitarianism':
"There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that a person who sees in moral obligation a transcendental fact, an objective reality belonging to the province of 'Things in themselves,' is likely to be more obedient to it than one who believes it to be entirely subjective, having its seat in human consciousness only."]

But if you want to find the word “objective” and “objective reality” used abundantly, then you’ve got to go to Kant. In the index to the Pluhar translation, “objective” is used to translate “objektiv” and the short one-word definition is “reality,” followed by “application to an object.”

In Kant, “objective” means in reference to the object; “subjective” means in reference to the subject. To give an example, the categories, which are themselves mere forms of thought, acquire objective reality by being applied to objects given to us in intuition. (B150-151) The phrase “objective reality” (objectiven Realität) appears 32 times in Kant’s complete works, 10 in the 'Critique of Pure Reason' alone.

But this is hardly conclusive, and Kant certainly puts his own spin onto this phrase. The closest he comes to using this phrase in a quasi-Objectivist way is in a footnote to Bxl where he talks about the “objective reality of outer intuition.” He then writes to a possible objector,
"I suppose someone will object to this proof [of the objective reality of outer intuition] by saying: But all I am conscious of directly is what is within me, i.e., of my presentations of external things; and hence we still have not established whether or not there is anything outside me. However, through inner experience I am conscious of my existence in time . . .and that is more than to be conscious merely of my presentation. But this consciousness of my existence in time . . . is the same thing as empirical consciousness of my existence, and that can be determined only by reference to something linked with my existence that is outside me."

Let’s now take a closer look at Stephen’s argument that Kant killed objectivity. He begins by telling us that, “for reason to be objective, it must have contact with reality. The most obvious candidate for such direct contact is sense-preception.” I hope I’m not being too picky here but I find this a curious beginning, or at least the phrasing is curious. The first sentence tells us that reason must have contact with reality, but the next sentence tells us that the senses, not reason, have “direct contact” with reality. He has switched from “reason” and “contact” to “senses” and “direct contact.”

Let us assume that he means the latter, that the senses have direct or unmediated contact with reality and ask, What does Kant say? According to Caygill in his Kant Dictionary p. 264, “Kant’s doctrine of intuition [his word for sense-perception] must be situated within the agenda established by Aristotle. [Kant] remained consistent with the Aristotelian tradition in respect of the direct, unmediated character of intuition…” At A19/B33 Kant writes, “[I]ntuition is that by which a cognition refers to objects directly…” Kant did add twists of his own, but he clearly distinguished between “intuition” and “conception,” the latter being a mediated contact with reality, the former direct contact with reality.

If this is correct, it seems to be a blow to the main premise of Stephen’s argument. In some sense at least, Kant differs with his rationalist predecessors who all bought some version of Descartes’ theory of ideas.

[Another curiosity. The first sentence on p. 30 states, “For all their differences, the empiricists and rationalists had agreed with the broadly Enlightenment conception of reason . . . that it is competent to know reality objectively . . .” But on p. 32 we read, “The rationalists and the empiricists had jointly struck a blow to the Enlightenment confidence in reason.”]

Stephen also seems to assume that Kant is worse than the moderns he praises. But are they? Not on the subject of direct awareness of reality. They all buy into Descartes' theory of ideas, i.e., that we are directly aware only of our ideas, not of objects in the world. The worst is Leibniz whose monads don’t even have windows! They couldn’t be in direct perception contact with reality even if there were objects in reality for them to perceive. The empiricists, whom one would think would be better on this issue, are all Cartesians. “The mind has no other immediate object but its own ideas,” says Locke. (Essay, IV, 1, 1). Berkeley allows only minds and their ideas into his ontology so there is nothing else to be directly aware of. Hume tells us, “The mind has never any thing present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connection with objects.” (Enquiry, 12, 1)

It is Kant that departs from the Cartesian theory of ideas and in this respect is closer to Objectivism that all the moderns mentioned above.

On p. 32 Stephen makes the point that for Kant, experience and necessity “have nothing to do with each other.” I agree.

So we seem to have two premises; (1) the senses are not in direct contact with reality but with our internal representations and (2) that necessity cannot be got from experience.

I have challenged (1). Perhaps the clearest statement Kant makes of the contrary is in the “Refutation of Idealism” section of the second edition. Kant writes: “Idealism assumed that the only direct experience is inner experience and that from it we only infer external things; . . .yet here we have proved that outer experience is in fact direct. . .” (B276-7) Kant doesn’t get much clearer than that and his language, at least in the Pluhar translation, is very close to Objectivist language.

I don’t know how Stephen would counter my argument and rather than puts words in his mouth, I think I’ll just leave it there.

[I now know how Stephen would counter my argument, since we had lunch yesterday (8-7-04).] He said, somewhere between the eggs and the coffee, that his argument depends on the quotation from Kant that he gives on p. 36. Let me quote the quote:

"[E]verything intuited in space or time, and therefore all objects of experience possible to us, are nothing but appearances, that is, mere representations, which in the manner in which they are represented, as extended being, or as series of alterations, have no independent existence outside our thoughts." (A491/B519)

According to Kant we cannot know the noumena (=intrinsic) as it is in itself. Only God, if there is one, could know that because such knowledge requires an intellectual intuition, i.e., an intuition that creates the object rather than has the object given to it, and we don’t have such an intuition. We are metaphysically passive vis-à-vis the object given to our senses. Short of divine revelation, we cannot know the noumena as it is in itself. (In Objectivism, we cannot know the intrinsic. That would require that God speak to us and the dude has been conspicuously silent for a hell of a long time. According to Objectivism, his silence is due to his non-existence. That would certainly explain it!)

We can, however, know the noumena as it appears. This Kant sometimes names “appearance.” Note my formulation, “we know the noumena as it appears.” I like this formulation because it highlights the fact that there is only one reality, the noumenal reality, and although we cannot know it as it doesn’t appear to us; we can know it as it does appear to us. (And why is that surprising?)

H. J. Paton seems to agree with this when he writes, “Strictly speaking, there are not two things, but only one thing considered in two different ways: the thing in itself and the thing as it appears.” (Kant’s 'Metaphysics of Experience,' I, p. 61) Kant is not a two-world metaphysician.

There is, however a small price to knowing the noumena as it appears; you need a mind. (I said it was a small price.) But that means all knowledge is mind-dependent as well as noumena-dependent. There is no knowledge of reality without reality; there is no knowledge of reality without knowledge.

I do however think Stephen has a point against Kant’s formulation. What he said was “objects. . . have no independent existence outside our thoughts.” It might have been clearer had he said “Objects of knowledge depend on a knower (as well as on noumenal reality.)” This is close to “objective” in the sense Objectivism uses it.

The intrinsic is totally mind-independent. The objective requires both reality and the mind. The subjective requires just the mind.

For Kant the a priori forms of intuition and of conception require only the mind. They are subjective, i.e., part of the subject. The phenomenal object requires both reality and the mind. And finally, the noumena is completely mind- independent. I find this formulation somewhat close to the Objectivist distinction between the intrinsic, the objective and the subjective.

Kant however is careful to ward off something like the strong subjectivist interpretation that Stephen gives. To see this let me continue the quotation to the next sentence. “This doctrine I entitled transcendental idealism.” To this sentence he appends the following footnote; “Elsewhere I have sometimes also called it formal idealism, in order to distinguish it from material idealism --i.e., the usual idealism, which doubts [Descartes] or denies [Berkeley] the existence of external things themselves.” (Pluhar trans.)

I conclude: Phenomenal objects are mind-dependent (as well as reality dependent). Noumena objects are mind- independent. Science can know reality as it appears. Neither science nor metaphysics can know reality as it doesn’t appear.

KANT’S ESSENTIAL ARGUMENT (pp. 33ff)

Before looking at what Stephen has to say about Kant’s attack on objectivity, I would like to do a “drive-by” on a sentence I found hard to believe when I read it. The sentence is, “In other words, the empiricists and the rationalists were realists.” (33) I’m rubbing my eyes and saying, “Huh?!” What empiricists (Locke, Berkeley and Hume) and what rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz) does Stephen have in mind here? Let me take one from each column, so to speak. Does anyone think that Leibniz is a realist? If we take the Monadology seriously, there are only monads (atomic minds). And the monads have no windows. Even if there was a real world “out there” the monads could never perceive it.

As for the empiricists, surely Berkeley is no realist. For him, there are only minds and their ideas. If this is true, then even if Kant were not a realist, he would still be a “modern,” just like Leibniz and Berkeley. But let’s move on to Stephen’s analysis of Kant’s essential argument.

On p. 33, Stephen details “Kant’s essential argument” against the objectivity of knowledge. Since I have covered the big quote from A491/B519 above I can be briefer in my treatment of this topic. Here the key quotation is the following:

"There are only two possible ways in which synthetic representations [i.e., what one experiences sic] and their objects can establish connection, obtain necessary relation to one another and as it were, meet one another. Either the object alone ['alone' is not in the original German] must make the representation possible, or the representation alone must make the object possible." (A92/B125)

In his comment to this paragraph, Stephen quickly moves to discuss the “diaphanous” model named by Kelley in 'The Evidence of the Senses,' pp. 22-24. He claims that for Kant, either the subject has no identity of its own, or “the object alone must make the representation possible.” (33)

But this is a misreading of the text. Kant is trying to determine whether the object or the subject is responsible for the a priori part of our knowledge of any object. Kant continues the above quotation as follows: “If the object makes the representation possible, then the reference is only empirical and the representation is never possible a priori.” He then gives an example of this. “This is what happens in the case of . . . sensation.” Surely the mind doesn’t lose its identity in the case of sensation? Then Kant considers a priori cognitions, and here the mind is the determining factor. But surely the mind hasn’t suddenly gained an identity.

On p. 34 Stephen seems to indict the empiricists, like Locke, who rejected innate ideas and metaphored the mind as a “white paper.” “The knowing subject is not a blank, identity-less tablet.” But if this is true, it not only gets Kant, it also gets Locke. This may be too big a hammer.

IDENTIFYING KANT’S KEY ASSUMPTIONS

Stephen identifies two key assumptions in Kant: (1) “the knowing subject’s having an identity is an obstacle to cognition,” and (2) “abstractness, universality, and necessity have no legitimate basis in our experience.”

Rand was the first Objectivist to advance an argument for (1), but the problem is that the argument she put in Kant’s mouth, Kant never used. Walsh made this point in the “A Point of Misinterpretation” section of his paper “Ayn Rand and the Metaphysics of Kant” which appeared in Vol. 2, #1 of JARS. Walsh’s name does not appear in either the index or in the bibliography of Stephen’s book. Since Walsh claims that no one has ever presented any evidence that Kant held (1) I shall await further developments on this issue. Walsh convinced me, but others may have a different opinion.

As for (2), I have a few quibbles with Stephen’s formulation, but since his argument is kind of dead without (1), why don’t I just give (2) to him and let it go until such time as (1) gets rehabilitated, if ever.

[Misleading quotation.] On p. 35 Stephen writes that for Kant, “The objects that science [?] explores exist ‘only in our brain,’” and refers to A484/B512. But when one goes to check out the context one can immediately see how very misleading the quotation is. Let me provide the context in which this remark occurs. It is located in the section of the “Transcendental Dialectic” devoted to the “Antinomies of Pure Reason,” section IV, entitled “On the Transcendental Problems of Pure Reason Insofar as They Must Be Absolutely Be Capable of Being Solved.” (Catchy title, let’s dance)

Note that this is not a section devoted to the “objects that science explores” which is what you would expect from Stephen’s lead-up to the four words he quotes from Kant, but is a problem to be solved by pure reason. There are four antinomies in this section but for the sake of simplicity let consider just one, to wit: does the universe have a beginning in time? One would think the answer is either yes or no. But Kant and Rand disagree, albeit for different reasons. They think the question is inappropriate.
For Rand the reason is that the universe is not in time, but rather time is in the universe. Therefore it is inappropriate to ask the question.

Kant thinks the question is inappropriate because the universe can never be an object of possible experience. The concept of the universe is in “your brain and cannot be given outside it at all.” What about science? Kant is very explicit that he is not talking about natural science. He writes, "In natural science, on the other hand, there is an infinity of conjectures in regard to which certainty can never be expected. For natural appearances are objects that are given to us independently of our concept. Therefore the key to them lies not in us and our pure thinking but outside us; . . . ” (A481/B509)

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH STEPHEN’S PROJECT.

I think it leaves it pretty much intact. And I say this for two reasons:

1. Part of Stephen’s thesis is that “the failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible.” (i) Someone, like me for example, could then say that Postmodernism results when one turns one’s back on the Enlightenment that would include Kant.

2. There is enough blame to go around without (mis)using Kant. There are 25 thinkers named on the cover of the paperback edition of Stephen’s book in addition to Kant. From such a list we have plenty of people to blame.

3. Finally, the problem of postmodernism may not be as bad as some think, at least not in philosophy. Objectivism talks about the “culture wars” and see it as a battle between three adversaries, the pre-modern, modern, and the post-modern. I think the real bad-ass opponent may be the pre-moderns (although see the discussion at this site recently between Chris Sciabarra and others dated Aug. 11, 04). In philosophy, post-modernism is dead, or, if not dead, at least moribund.

Nicholas Rescher recently sent me a chapter of a new book by him (he has written over 100) on the subject and this is what he writes about the battle between the two:

"Postmodernism vs. Traditional Philosophy. The statistics clearly indicate that the postmodernist assault on the traditional philosophical concerns of epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, etc. has proved an abyssal (sic) failure. Nor has postmodernism’s redirection of concern form the more exact branches of toward literature or sociology had much visible impact upon philosophy. Verdict: a decided defeat for postmodernism."

This news ought to warm a lot of hearts.

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