Dina Emundts at the Kant Workshop

Dina Emundts' paper 'Transcendental Idealism and Metaphysics' dealt with the possibility of a scientific treatment of episodes of inner sense such as desires. She pointed out that in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science Kant argues that science is transcendentally justified in conceiving of nature as constituted ultimately by matter. The Principles of the Understanding, according to Emundts, justify such a conception, by proving that we must presuppose an unchanging substratum of matter in order to perceive changes in empirical objects. She went on to argue that Kant seems to have no equivalent argument for the necessity of a soul substance acting as an unchanging substratum that makes possible the perception of changes in inner states. She suggested that Kant avoided such an argument precisely because he is a transcendental philosopher, i.e. precisely because he sees that the possibility of experience does not require a soul substance. She also noted however, that this left us with no possibility of making the study of inner states susceptible to treatment by the hard sciences, which means inner states are exceptions to the causal determinism that Kant’s metaphysics of nature seems to entail.

In the question period it was suggested that inner states can be studied by science in as much as they consist in intensive and extensive magnitudes, although they may not be subject to strict causal laws. It was further suggested that the fact that Kant provides no metaphysical conception of a soul substance is irrelevant to the scientific study of inner states. This is because, in actual fact, no such conception of matter as an unchanging substratum is necessary for the possibility of experiencing changes in external objects, so there is no equivalent argument needed with regard to episodes of inner sense.