Transcendental Idealism Reading Group: Friedman on 'Kant, Scepticism and Idealism'
This week we read Michael Friedman's 'Kant, Scepticism and Idealism'. The paper starts by pointing out the similarities between a recent complaint about Kant's transcendental idealism (TI) voiced by Stroud and McDowell, and one of Jacobi's objections to Kant. The complaint is that even if TI in some sense justifies our knowledge of the empirical world against Humean and Cartesian scepticism, it still makes such knowledge seem second grade due to its not being of fully mind-independent reality. Friedman notes there is a reasonable Kantian reply to this complaint: that it is a non sequitur to infer that just because our knowledge is limited to the empirical domain, and so cannot be of objects not existing in space and time, that it somehow falls short of being knowledge.
Having made this response on Kant's behalf, Friedman notes there is nevertheless a sceptical problem that arises from Kant's way of 'grounding' knowledge of the phenomenal world and which Kant and his successors in the German idealist tradition took seriously. Reinhold apparently formulated the worry thus: how, within the realm of experience (or, 'at the empirical level'), do we know that the matter given a posteriori to our senses will conform to the a priori cognitive forms via which we cognise it, and thus know that our purported empirical knowledge is genuinely knowledge?
We spent much of the session today trying to work out exactly what this sceptical worry amounts to. It cannot be a worry that empirical objects might cease to conform to a priori cognitive structures, because at the empirical level, objects are defined for Kant as so conforming. And the worry can't be located at the transcendental level, because Reinhold has raised it 'within consciousness', that is, at the level of empirical reality. Friedman's gloss is that the worry is about there being no specific causal laws presented in experience, or that what we take to be such laws are in fact no such thing.
So we have two types of scepticism.
1) (Jacobian scepticism) That our knowledge is not of fully mind-independent reality
2) (Reinholdian scepticism) Even granted that empirical reality conforms to a priori constraints, so that empirical objects necessarily conform to certain general 'laws of nature', we are not justified in taking putative specific empirical laws of nature to be necessary
Friedman claims that it is Reinholdian scepticism to which the Absolute Idealists such as Schelling are responding, and to which Kant himself responded in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and the the ether proof of the Opus Posthumuum.
Friedman takes Kant to think that particular empirical laws - such as some of Newton's laws of physics - owe their status as laws to being 'grounded' or 'determined' by the principles of the pure understanding. But even if we accept this, there is still a problem over many putative specific empirical laws. And this problem becomes particularly acute when we consider that for Kant, whole domains of objects described by natural science - for example, the domains described by biology and chemistry - cannot have their putative laws vouchsafed by being derived from a priori principles of the understanding. In light of this Kant coins the distinction between constitutive and regulative principles of the understanding: the former consist of the pure principles of the understanding, without which experience would be impossible, the latter consist of guidelines for making knowledge as systematic as possible, but are not necessary for experience. The former confer the honorific title of being laws on rules 'grounded' in them, the latter bestow only the warrant to treat rules as laws for the sake of the systematicity of knowlege.
Friedman argues that Kant's ether proof in the Opus Posthumuum and Schelling's philosophy of nature are both attempts respond to Reinholdian scepticism, by 'grounding' the putative laws of some of the special sciences in the pure principles of the understanding, and thus warranting our taking them to be genuine laws (warranting our taking them to instantiate constitutive rather than regulative principles). The general idea is the Schelling's philosophy of nature is an attempt to demonstrate that magnetic, electrical and chemical forces are governed by the fundamental forces of repulsion and attraction that also govern Newtonian physics. Glossing over much puzzling detail (does Schelling infer an identity from a similarity?), if this is so, then all the life sciences are 'grounded' in the pure principles of the understanding and thus can contain genuine laws of nature.
Setting aside the lassitude Schelling allows himself in demonstrating that organic matter is suffuse with various 'forces' that are 'grounded' in the pure principles of the understanding, there seems to be a serious ambiguity about what Absolute Idealism achieves. Does it:
a) answer the Reinholdian sceptic by simply accepting the Kantian story about constitutive principles and extending the domain of objects governed by laws that instantiate them. This would leave in place TI, that is, would not provide an answer to Jacobian scepticism because the extended domain is still one constituted by objects that are transcendentally mind-dependent (objects governed by laws that instantiate the pure principles of the understanding) .
Or:
b) reject the Kantian story and seek to provide an answer to the Jacobian sceptic. This would involve something along the lines of the idea that reality as it is in itself is an actualisaion of the 'same' laws that govern our experience of it, this identity somehow guaranteeing that our knowledge is truly knowledge of fully mind-independent reality. Schelling's philosophy of nature presumably demonstrates that the required identity obtains.
Friedman seems to be claiming that Schelling is motivated to answer Jacobian scepticism in light of his awareness of the force of Reinholdian scepticism. But to answer the former kind of scepticism one needs to be engaged in b), which isn't motivated by Reinholdian scepticism at all.
Having made this response on Kant's behalf, Friedman notes there is nevertheless a sceptical problem that arises from Kant's way of 'grounding' knowledge of the phenomenal world and which Kant and his successors in the German idealist tradition took seriously. Reinhold apparently formulated the worry thus: how, within the realm of experience (or, 'at the empirical level'), do we know that the matter given a posteriori to our senses will conform to the a priori cognitive forms via which we cognise it, and thus know that our purported empirical knowledge is genuinely knowledge?
We spent much of the session today trying to work out exactly what this sceptical worry amounts to. It cannot be a worry that empirical objects might cease to conform to a priori cognitive structures, because at the empirical level, objects are defined for Kant as so conforming. And the worry can't be located at the transcendental level, because Reinhold has raised it 'within consciousness', that is, at the level of empirical reality. Friedman's gloss is that the worry is about there being no specific causal laws presented in experience, or that what we take to be such laws are in fact no such thing.
So we have two types of scepticism.
1) (Jacobian scepticism) That our knowledge is not of fully mind-independent reality
2) (Reinholdian scepticism) Even granted that empirical reality conforms to a priori constraints, so that empirical objects necessarily conform to certain general 'laws of nature', we are not justified in taking putative specific empirical laws of nature to be necessary
Friedman claims that it is Reinholdian scepticism to which the Absolute Idealists such as Schelling are responding, and to which Kant himself responded in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and the the ether proof of the Opus Posthumuum.
Friedman takes Kant to think that particular empirical laws - such as some of Newton's laws of physics - owe their status as laws to being 'grounded' or 'determined' by the principles of the pure understanding. But even if we accept this, there is still a problem over many putative specific empirical laws. And this problem becomes particularly acute when we consider that for Kant, whole domains of objects described by natural science - for example, the domains described by biology and chemistry - cannot have their putative laws vouchsafed by being derived from a priori principles of the understanding. In light of this Kant coins the distinction between constitutive and regulative principles of the understanding: the former consist of the pure principles of the understanding, without which experience would be impossible, the latter consist of guidelines for making knowledge as systematic as possible, but are not necessary for experience. The former confer the honorific title of being laws on rules 'grounded' in them, the latter bestow only the warrant to treat rules as laws for the sake of the systematicity of knowlege.
Friedman argues that Kant's ether proof in the Opus Posthumuum and Schelling's philosophy of nature are both attempts respond to Reinholdian scepticism, by 'grounding' the putative laws of some of the special sciences in the pure principles of the understanding, and thus warranting our taking them to be genuine laws (warranting our taking them to instantiate constitutive rather than regulative principles). The general idea is the Schelling's philosophy of nature is an attempt to demonstrate that magnetic, electrical and chemical forces are governed by the fundamental forces of repulsion and attraction that also govern Newtonian physics. Glossing over much puzzling detail (does Schelling infer an identity from a similarity?), if this is so, then all the life sciences are 'grounded' in the pure principles of the understanding and thus can contain genuine laws of nature.
Setting aside the lassitude Schelling allows himself in demonstrating that organic matter is suffuse with various 'forces' that are 'grounded' in the pure principles of the understanding, there seems to be a serious ambiguity about what Absolute Idealism achieves. Does it:
a) answer the Reinholdian sceptic by simply accepting the Kantian story about constitutive principles and extending the domain of objects governed by laws that instantiate them. This would leave in place TI, that is, would not provide an answer to Jacobian scepticism because the extended domain is still one constituted by objects that are transcendentally mind-dependent (objects governed by laws that instantiate the pure principles of the understanding) .
Or:
b) reject the Kantian story and seek to provide an answer to the Jacobian sceptic. This would involve something along the lines of the idea that reality as it is in itself is an actualisaion of the 'same' laws that govern our experience of it, this identity somehow guaranteeing that our knowledge is truly knowledge of fully mind-independent reality. Schelling's philosophy of nature presumably demonstrates that the required identity obtains.
Friedman seems to be claiming that Schelling is motivated to answer Jacobian scepticism in light of his awareness of the force of Reinholdian scepticism. But to answer the former kind of scepticism one needs to be engaged in b), which isn't motivated by Reinholdian scepticism at all.
Labels: Transcendental Idealism
posted by matt at 3:35 pm
2 Comments:
The way I read Friedman was that, in some way that I didn't really understand, Schelling's answer to the Reinholdian sceptic involves the rejection of the Kantian dichotomies between constitutive and regulative principles, between pure understanding and reflective judgement, and between appearances and things in themselves. If that is so, then it is clear how the Jacobian is answered. But I didn't really understand how these things fit together with the move to Schelling's Naturphilosophie.
Yes, I agree, it is clear that dissolving the 'Kantian dichotomies' would provide an answer to the Jacobian sceptic, and yes, I also wasn't sure how Schelling's philosophy of nature achieved this. But I think Friedman presents the dialectic at work here somewhat misleadingly. The paper ends with the claim that Schelling's philosophy of nature should be required reading for neo-Hegelians like McDowell who want to overcome Jacobian scepticism. Part of the support for that claim comes from the idea that Schelling is simply responding to Reinholdian scepticism, as Kant himself felt the need to also. This is supposed to 'domesticate' Schelling, by showing his philosophy of nature to be a close cousin of Kant's transcendental philosophy. But I don't think Schelling is responding to Reihnoldian scepticism at all, but rather directly to Jacobian scepticism. Whatever one thinks of the response itself, it seems deceptive to present it as riding in on the wings of problems Kant himself felt to be pressing, and which are generated and dealt with within the orbit of transcendental philosophy. Another way to make this point would be to say that a response to Reinholdian scepticism involves rejigging the classification of what principles count as regulative rather than constitutive, and a more nuanced conception of the relation between understanding and reflective judgement. Yet it leaves in place - indeed must leave in place - the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. But it is the rejection of this final dichotomy that is central to answering the Jacobian sceptic. So it seems to me misleading to recommend Schelling's philosophy of nature to contemporary philosophers on account of the fact that it engages with a problem Kant himself felt. It does not. It engages with a problem that Kant thought unanswerable - the problem of demonstrating that fully mind-independent reality is articulated by properties and relations that are in some sense identical to the properties and relations our cognitive set-up allows us to ascribe to empirical objects.
I also think it is misleading to suggest that McDowell (as a standard bearer for so-called neo-Hegelianism) is engaged in answering Jacobian scepticism in a way that requires recourse to Schelling's philosophy of nature. McDowell is not seeking to demonstrate an identity between 'thinkable contents' and fully mind-independent reality, but rather: show that such an identity is possible, rather than ruled out a priori, if we properly understand Kant's conception of inentionality and reject his transcendental psychology. The dialectical aim is therefore to show that with a workable theory of intentionality on board, we can see how such an identity could obtain. It is not to prove in some metaphysical sense that the identity does obtain. Thus McDowell's more modest dialectical aim has no need of the philosophy of nature that would be needed to underwrite such a proof.
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