Identity and Substance in Hume and Kant

According to Hume, the idea of a persisting, self-identical object, distinct from our impressions of it, and the idea of a duration of time, the mere passage of time without change, are mutually supporting "fictions". Each rests upon a "mistake", the commingling of "qualities of the imagination" or "impressions of reflection" with "external" impressions (perceptions), and, strictly speaking, we are conceptually and epistemically entitled to neither. Among Kant's aims in the First Critique is the securing of precisely these entitlements. Like Hume, he acknowledges the correlativity of the notions of temporal duration and persisting self-identical objects (i.e., continuant substances). Unlike Hume, however, he undertakes to establish the legitimacy or objective validity of the schematized category of substance and, correspondingly, of the representation of time as a formal unity with duration as one of its modes. This essay formulates Hume's problem and then explores Kant's complex argument for the legitimacy of our concepts of substantial identity and temporal duration, from its origins in his accounts of the forms of inner and outer sense and the transcendental unity of apperception through the Transcendental Deduction of the unschematized category of inherence and substance and its schematized counterpart, substance as permanence, in the First Analogy. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The transcendental argument in Kant's

Conclusions From this summary account of the deduction we can draw a number of conclusions: In the first place, the guiding thesis used to make sense of the argument was that the argument needed to ground not just the moral law but a cognitive framework within which the moral law is the highest law. This distinction is important since it allows us to distinguish in the practical philosophy (as in the theoretical) a level of transcendental argumentation from a level of metaphysical argumentation: The concern of transcendental philosophy would be to establish the conditions of the possibility of a cognitive framework, whereas the concern of metaphysics (in Kant's sense) is to develop the principles of a given cognitive framework and to derive from them knowledge of objects (see KU, Introduction, Section V). (This distinction turns out to be invaluable in dealing with the problem of the application of the moral law.)In the second place, this interpretation allows us to avoid reducing the practical viewpoint to the status of a poor imitation of real knowledge, one whose inadequacies must be passed over in embarrassed silence for the sake of rescuing morality. If the argument is correct, practical knowledge is in one sense more firmly grounded than (and even subsumes) theoretical knowledge, even though its grounds do not allow of complete insight.And, finally, we can make at least some cautious generalizations about Kant's understanding of a transcendental argument. Two things in particular seem to characterize the deduction: (1) It is essential that the argument is concerned with a cognitive framework rather than with any specific knowledge within that framework; it is the possibility of knowledge at all that is in question, and it is that fact that requires a special kind of argument. (2) Kant's assumptions about the distinct roots of human knowledge are indispensable to the argument. The distinction between mere speculation (mere thinking, which requires only our rational faculties) and knowledge (which also requires sensibility) is essential: Without that distinction we cannot understand why the argument is necessary in the first place (since, as I argued above, we cannot see how the moral law is synthetic), nor can we understand what it means to ground a cognitive framework: Grounding a cognitive framework for Kant has turned out to involve showing how two irreducibly distinct faculties can cooperate in acts of cognition - here it is the faculty of desire and the pure will which are conceptually irreducible and for which grounds of a possible a priori unity must nevertheless be given. The fact that these two features are so central to the argument would indicate that they should be taken into consideration in any discussion of transcendental arguments framed along Kantian lines.     

The uniqueness problem in Kant's transcendental doctrine of method

Conclusion The verificationist defense of Kant's refutation of idealism is a specimen of the reconstructive work that needs to be done in evaluating Kant's transcendental philosophy. It is necessary to proceed piecemeal in the critical examination of each of Kant's arguments, fitting it to the proposed indirect proof model, and rethinking its soundness or unsoundness. There may be few conclusions that can stand just as they are. The justification of Kant's transcendental proof that there are unknowable things in themselves establishes an important first step in this continuing inquiry.     

Transcendental Tense: D.H. Mellor

Kant's claim that our knowledge of time is transcendental in his sense, while false of time itself, is true of tenses, i.e. of the locations of events and other temporal entities in McTaggart's A series. This fact can easily, and I think only, be explained by taking time itself to be real but tenseless.     

Reading Kant’s doctrine of schematism algebraically

Kant’s investigations into so-called a priori judgments of pure mathematics in the Critique of Pure Reason (KrV) are mainly confined to geometry and arithmetic both of which are grounded on our pure forms of intuition, space, and time. Nevertheless, as regards notions such as irrational numbers and continuous magnitudes, such a restricted account is crucially problematic. I argue that algebra can play a transcendental role with respect to the two pure intuitive sciences, arithmetic and geometry, as the condition of their possibility. It follows that Kant’s schematism of the concept of magnitude ought to be quantitatively represented in algebraic formulas in general, and also undergo several modifications in order to suit continuities.     

Peirce’s ‘Prescision’ as a Transcendental Method

Abstract

In this Paper I interpret Charles S. Peirce’s method of prescision as a transcendental method. In order to do so, I argue that Peirce’s pragmatism can be interpreted in a transcendental light only if we use a non‐justificatory understanding of transcendental philosophy. I show how Peirce’s prescision is similar to some abstracting procedure that Immanuel Kant used in his Critique of Pure Reason. Prescision abstracts from experience and thought in general those elements without which such experience and thought would be unaccountable. Similarly, in the Aesthetics, Kant isolated the a priori forms of intuition by showing how they could be abstracted from experience in general, while experience in general cannot be thought without them. However, if Peirce’s and Kant’s methods are similar in this respect, they reached very different conclusions.     

The ontology and temporality of conscience

Philosophers have often posited a foundational calling voice, such that hearing its call constitutes subjects as responsive and responsible negotiators of normative claims. I give the name ldquo;transcendental conscience to that which speaks in this founding, constitutive voice. The role of transcendental conscience is not – or not merely – to normatively bind the subject, but to constitute the possibility of the subject's being bound by any particular, contentful normative claims in the first place. I explore the ontological and temporal status of transcendental conscience, using Heidegger's account of conscience in Being and Time as my textual touchstone. I ask what performative structure the call of conscience might have that would enable it to constitute normative responsiveness, and I raise some temporal conundrums surrounding this structure. I argue that it is incoherent to attempt to give a literal, chronological account of the origin of normative grip and response. I suggest that we can best understand the founding calls of conscience, not as literal events occurring in regular time, but as events that can only show up retrospectively, as occurring in an ever-receding, unlocalizable past, and that these calls can only be figured mythically and metaphorically. Appropriating a Derridean term, I claim that the voice of transcendental conscience must be that of a lsquo;ghost, whose call binds us by haunting us – a haunting that is no less transcendentally necessary for its inability to be translated into a literal historical event.     

Subjectivity in Descartes and Kant

Kant's response to Cartesian scepticism is often characterized in the following way. Whereas Descartes drives a wedge between subjective experience and objective reality, Kant argues that there could be no such thing as experience at all if reality were not itself structured in just the way our thought about it is structured. This picture of Kant's response to Descartes portrays him as succeeding, where Descartes fails, in arguing directly from the nature of experience to the nature of reality; as subscribing, therefore, to Descartes' view that one is immediately aware only of one's own mental states, but as seeing a way out of the subjective predicament. I maintain that this picture is deeply flawed. Kant's transcendental argument is in fact a thoroughgoing critique of Descartes' subjectivism, and destroys the Cartesian barrier to recognizing that our awareness of reality is unmediated and direct.     

Schelling’s substantive reinterpretation of the transcendental turn: beyond method

ABSTRACT

Several factors, including but not limited to his investments in Naturphilosophie and Spinoza, make it hard to determine the extent to which Schelling remains on track with Kant’s transcendental project. My aim here is to isolate Schelling’s conception of transcendental method in the first decade of his philosophical development, a topic that has received little direct and extended discussion. Schelling’s 1800 System of Transcendental Idealism stands out as of particular importance, but no single text can be regarded as Schelling’s definitive statement of his views on the question of method in his early period, necessitating a diachronic approach. I argue that, though in important respects Schelling’s concerns diverge from those of Kant and Fichte, Schelling should not be regarded as abandoning the transcendental framework, and is best understood as attempting to work out what is involved at the original point of adoption of the transcendental standpoint. This entails, I argue, exchanging transcendental philosophy’s claim to a distinctive method for a substantive interpretation of the transcendental turn.     

IV—Kant's Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic

This paper gives an interpretation of Kant's argument for transcendental idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic. I argue against a common way of reading this argument, which sees Kant as arguing that substantive a priori claims about mind-independent reality would be unintelligible because we cannot explain the source of their justification. I argue that Kant's concern with how synthetic a priori propositions are possible is not a concern with the source of their justification, but with how they can have objects. I argue that Kant's notion of intuition needs to be understood as a kind of representation which involves the presence to consciousness of the object it represents, and that this means that a priori intuition cannot present us with a mind-independent feature of reality.     

Kant on justification in transcendental philosophy

Kant's claim that the justification of transcendental philosophy is a priori is puzzling because it should be consistent with (1) his general restriction on the justification of knowledge, that intuitions must play a role in the justification of all nondegenerate knowledge, with (2) the implausibility of a priori intuitions being the only ones on which transcendental philosophy is founded, and with (3) his professed view that transcendental philosophy is not analytic. I argue that this puzzle can be solved, that according to Kant transcendental philosophy is justified a priori in the sense that the only empirical information required for its justification can be derived from any possible human experience. Transcendental justification does not rely on any more particular or special observations or experiments. Philip Kitcher's general account of apriority in Kant captures this aspect of a priori knowledge. Nevertheless, I argue that Kitcher's account goes wrong in the link it specifies between apriority and certainty.     

The A Theory Of Magnitude (ATOM) model in temporal perception and reproduction tasks

According to the A Theory of Magnitude (ATOM) model, time, numbers and space are processed by a common analog magnitude system. The model proposes that time, numbers and space are influenced by each other. Indeed, spatial-temporal (STEARC effect), spatial-numerical (SNARC effect) and temporal-numerical (TiNARC effect) interactions have been observed. However, the processing of time, numbers and space has not yet been studied within the same experimental procedure. The goal of this study is to test the ATOM model using a procedure in which time, numbers and space are all present. The participants were asked to perform temporal estimation (Experiment 1) and reproduction (Experiment 2) tasks in two different conditions, with either numbers or letters as stimuli. In Experiment 1, significant STEARC, SNARC and TiNARC effects were found in general and when numbers were presented. Moreover, a significant triple interaction between space, time and magnitude was observed, indicating associations between the left key, short duration and small magnitudes, as well as between the right key, long duration and large magnitudes. These results were similar in reaction times and accuracy. In Experiment 2, the results of reproduction times mirrored the previous data but the triple interaction was not found on reproduction times. Considering the temporal accuracy, the STEARC, SNARC and TiNARC effects as well as triple interaction were found. The results seem to partially confirm the ATOM model, even if differences between temporal tasks should be posited.     

The mental representation of integers: an abstract-to-concrete shift in the understanding of mathematical concepts

Mathematics has a level of structure that transcends untutored intuition. What is the cognitive representation of abstract mathematical concepts that makes them meaningful? We consider this question in the context of the integers, which extend the natural numbers with zero and negative numbers. Participants made greater and lesser judgments of pairs of integers. Experiment 1 demonstrated an inverse distance effect: When comparing numbers across the zero boundary, people are faster when the numbers are near together (e.g., −1 vs. 2) than when they are far apart (e.g., −1 vs. 7). This result conflicts with a straightforward symbolic or analog magnitude representation of integers. We therefore propose an analog-x hypothesis: Mastering a new symbol system restructures the existing magnitude representation to encode its unique properties. We instantiate analog-x in a reflection model: The mental negative number line is a reflection of the positive number line. Experiment 2 replicated the inverse distance effect and corroborated the model. Experiment 3 confirmed a developmental prediction: Children, who have yet to restructure their magnitude representation to include negative magnitudes, use rules to compare negative numbers. Taken together, the experiments suggest an abstract-to-concrete shift: Symbolic manipulation can transform an existing magnitude representation so that it incorporates additional perceptual-motor structure, in this case symmetry about a boundary. We conclude with a second symbolic-magnitude model that instantiates analog-x using a feature-based representation, and that begins to explain the restructuring process.     

试论康德心理学思想及其对当代的影响

康德著作中蕴含着丰富的心理学思想,其在继承沃尔夫理性心理学与经验心理学二分的基础上,通过批评理性心理学,消解了我思的主体地位,为解决二元论问题做出了重要努力;通过批评经验心理学,指明了心理学在成长为一门科学过程中必须面对的诸多问题。新康德主义在继承并改造康德思想的过程中,发展出一系列影响深远的心理学理论;认知心理学的重要代表人物皮亚杰基于对康德思想独具特色的把握,提出了发生认识论;而当代认知科学的图式理论,则完全是建基于对康德经验图式理论框架的全面继承上。     

Disentangling Heidegger’s transcendental questions

Recapitulating two recent trends in Heidegger-scholarship, this paper argues that the transcendental theme in Heidegger’s thought clarifies and relates the two basic questions of his philosophical itinerary. The preparatory question, which belongs to Being and Time, I.1–2, draws from the transcendental tradition to target the condition for the possibility of our openness to things: How must we be to access entities? The preliminary answer is that we are essentially opened up ecstatically and horizonally by timeliness. The fundamental question, which belongs to the unpublished Being and Time, I.3, and the rest of Heidegger’s path of thinking, is accessed by means of the first. In a turn of perspective, it targets that in terms of which we relate to the givenness of being. Heidegger first attempts to handle this question using the transcendental language of temporal horizon before happening upon the terminologically more fitting “event of appropriation” and thereafter criticizing transcendental terms. By reconstructing the preparatory question and its reversal, we can see that Heidegger’s later criticism of transcendence in fact relies on its initial success. The turn from timeliness to appropriation (initially by means of transcendental temporality) happens within the domain initially disclosed by the preparatory question.     

A model for the time-order error in contrast discrimination

Trials in a temporal two-interval forced-choice discrimination experiment consist of two sequential intervals presenting stimuli that differ from one another as to magnitude along some continuum. The observer must report in which interval the stimulus had a larger magnitude. The standard difference model from signal detection theory analyses poses that order of presentation should not affect the results of the comparison, something known as the balance condition (J.-C. Falmagne, 1985, in Elements of Psychophysical Theory). But empirical data prove otherwise and consistently reveal what Fechner (1860/1966, in Elements of Psychophysics) called time-order errors, whereby the magnitude of the stimulus presented in one of the intervals is systematically underestimated relative to the other. Here we discuss sensory factors (temporary desensitization) and procedural glitches (short interstimulus or intertrial intervals and response bias) that might explain the time-order error, and we derive a formal model indicating how these factors make observed performance vary with presentation order despite a single underlying mechanism. Experimental results are also presented illustrating the conventional failure of the balance condition and testing the hypothesis that time-order errors result from contamination by the factors included in the model.     

KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL STRATEGY

The interpretation of transcendental arguments remains a contentious issue for contemporary epistemology. It is usually agreed that they originated in Kant's theoretical philosophy and were intended to have some kind of anti-sceptical efficacy. I argue that the sceptic with whom Kant was concerned has been consistently misidentified. The actual sceptic was Hume, questioning whether the faculty of reason can justify any of our judgements whatsoever. His challenge is a sceptical argument regarding rule-following which engenders a vicious regress. Once this sceptical threat is properly identified, the prospects of transcendental arguments must be re-evaluated.     

The discursive form of human understanding as the source of the transcendental illusion

Kant famously claims that pure reason is subject to a transcendental illusion in which the subjective validity and the regulative use of a principle of reason are conflated with its objective validity and constitutive use. His doctrine of transcendental illusion is puzzling for he insists that this illusion is natural as well as necessary. The two dominant interpretation strategies cannot make sense of this puzzle because they turn out to be either too strong or too weak: they either struggle to account for the legitimate, regulative use of the transcendental principle of reason or fall short of explaining the necessity of the transcendental illusion. In contrast, I shall argue that it is possible to account for the fact that the transcendental illusion is natural and necessary because it has its source in the discursive form of our human understanding, and that this illusion can nevertheless be known to be illusory because our discursive nature can be recognised as a merely particular form of understanding by comparing it with a possible, intuitive form of understanding in an act of critical self-reflection.     

Kant's Schematism of the categories: An interpretation and defence

The aim of the Schematism chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason is to solve the problem posed by the “inhomogeneity” of intuitions and categories: the sensible properties of objects represented in intuition are of a different kind than the properties represented by categories. Kant's solution is to introduce what he calls “transcendental schemata,” which mediate the subsumption of objects under categories. I reconstruct Kant's solution in terms of two substantive premises, which I call Subsumption Sufficiency (i.e., that subsuming an object under a transcendental schema is sufficient to subsume it under the corresponding category) and Real Possibility (i.e., that it is really possible to subsume objects under each of the transcendental schemata). These two principles, together with a trivial modal one (the Subsumption-Possibility Link), entail that it is possible to subsume objects under categories; in other words, the argument of the Schematism is valid. The main work of the paper consists in reconstructing Kant's arguments for, and explanations of, these premises. I argue that they hinge on Kant's claim that transcendental schemata are “time-determinations,” which I interpret to mean: rules for reflexively representing the temporal relations among our own representational states. On the basis of this reading, I reconstruct Kant's argument for Subsumption Sufficiency, category by category. I also explain why Real Possibility follows almost immediately. Granting Kant the argument up to this point in the Critique, the argument of the Schematism is sound.     

How Do We Know Necessary Truths? Kant's Answer

It is traditionally held that our knowledge of necessity is a priori ; but the familiar theories of a priori knowledge – platonism and conventionalism – have now been discredited, and replaced by either modal skepticism or a posteriori essentialism. The main thesis of this paper is that Kant's theory of a priori knowledge, when detached from his transcendental idealism, offers a genuine alternative to these unpalatable options. According to Kant's doctrine, all epistemic necessity (which he calls "conviction" ( Ueberzeugung ) is grounded directly or indirectly on our capacity for clear and distinct rational intuition (which he calls "insight" ( Einsicht ). Insight, in turn, depends upon functions of the imagination for creating "mental models" of necessary truths. This doctrine is well exemplified by Kant's account of our knowledge of simple analytic truths.