The Standard Picture of Kant's Idealism

This entry draws on Henry E. Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, Yale University Press, 1983. "According to the standard picture, Kant's transcendental idealism is a metaphysical theory that affirms the unknowability of the 'real' (things in themselves) and relegates knowledge to the purely subjective realm of representations (appearances)." (p. 3)  P.F. Strawson and H. A. Prichard are exponents of this reading along with many others in the Anglosphere. The standard picture makes of Kant an inconsistent Berkeley who limits knowledge to appearances, these being understood as "mere representations" (blosse Vorstellungen), while at the same time positing an unknowable  realm of things in themselves.  Mere representations are assimilated to Berkeleian ideas so that when Kant states that we know only appearances, what he is telling us is that we know only the contents of our minds.

The standard picture opens Kant to the devastating objection that by limiting knowledge to appearances construed as mental contents he makes knowledge impossible when his stated aim was to justify the objective knowledge of nature and oppose Humean skepticism. Allison reports that Prichard "construes Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves in terms of the classic example of perceptual illusion: the straight stick that appears bent to an observer when it is immersed in water." (p. 6)  But then knowledge is rendered impossible, and Kant is reduced to absurdity.

Anyone who studies Kant in depth and in context and with an open mind should be able to see that his transcendental idealism is not intended as a subjective idealism. A related mistake is to think that subjective idealism is the only kind of idealism. The "standard picture" is fundamentally mistaken. Appearances (Erscheinungen) for Kant are not the private data of particular minds, and thus not ideas in the Cartesian-Lockean sense, or any other sort of content of a particular mind. Kant distinguishes crucially between Erscheinung and Schein/Apparenz between appearance and illusion/semblance. Because of this distinction, appearances cannot be assimilated to perceptual illusions in the way Prichard and the "standard picture" try to assimilate them.

For Kant, the world of phenomena or appearances is a world of  public, intersubjectively accessible, objects.  If you don't understand this you will never understand what Kant is maintaining. So the straight stick lately mentioned is for Kant a phenomenon, a public object, not a private mental item, whereas its seeming bent is an illusory private content of those particular embodied minds who, because of accidental factors, are unable to perceive the stick as it is in empirical reality.

The publicly accessible objects of the outer senses are said to be "empirically real, but transcendentally ideal." To understand this signature Kantian phrase, one needs to understand two distinctions, that between the ideal and the real, and that between the empirical  and the transcendental. The ideal is that which is 'inside the mind' and thus mind-dependent whereas the real is that which is 'outside the mind' and thus mind-independent. The inverted commas signal that these phrases are not to be taken spatially. 

What is ideal is either empirically ideal or transcendentally ideal. The empirically ideal embraces the "private data of an individual mind." (Allison, p. 6) Included therein are what are normally taken to be mental contents and "ideas in the Cartesian-Lockean sense." The empirically real embraces the totality of public, intersubjectively knowable objects in space and time.  In a word, the natural world.  Kant's claim that he is an empirical realist, but not an empirical idealist, amounts to the affirmation that  that "our experience is not limited to the private domain of our own representations . . . ." (7).  It should now be perfectly obvious that Kant is not espousing a subjective idealism.  

The planets and indeed everything in nature are empirically real. What then could it mean to say that these objects are transcendentally ideal?  It is to say that they are subject to certain "epistemic conditions" -- I borrow the phrase from Allison -- that make possible our knowledge of them.  Kant is clearly committed to there being a set of epistemic conditions without which empirical knowledge of empirically real objects would not be possible. Now in my humble opinion, Kant's theory of these epistemic conditions leaves a lot to be desired and is indeed without one univocal sense.  But this is not the issue at present. The issue is solely whether Kant's intent is to affirm a form of subjective idealism. The answer is that he is not. That is not his intent despite the existence of some passages that invite a subjectively-idealist reading. The proof that Kant is not promoting a subjective idealism is that his epistemic conditions, whatever they are, are not psychological or physiological.  

A psychological condition is

. . . some mechanism or aspect of the human cognitive apparatus that is appealed to in order to provide a genetic account of a belief or an empirical explanation of why we perceive things in a certain way. [. . .] Custom or habit, as used by Hume in his account of causality, is a prime example of such a psychological condition. As is well known, Kant was insistent in claiming that, although the appeal to such factors may be necessary to explain the origin of our beliefs and perceptions, or even of our knowledge "in the order of time" (der Zeit nach), it cannot  account for its objective validity. In Kant's terms it can answer the quaestio facti but not the quaestio juris.  The latter is the proper concern of the Critique, and this requires an appeal to epistemic conditions. (Allison, p. 11)

It should now be quite clear that Kant is not promoting a subjective or psychological idealism. His project, or rather a large part of it,  is to secure the objectivity of our knowledge of nature in the teeth of Humean skepticism, and to do so without a deus ex machina, without bringing God into the picture as both Descartes and Berkeley do.  (The other main part of his project is to show that rationalist metaphysics is not a source of objective knowledge.) Whether Kant succeeds in his project is a further question. I don't believe he does.

But if the question is whether Kant is espousing a subjective or psychological idealism, the answer is a resounding No.

Comments

[the ostrich of Woking]

OK, thanks for confirming that my interpretation of Kant is shared by Strawson and Prichard, who are giants of the English intellectual tradition. (I nominated Norman Kemp Smith, another giant). Thanks also for confirming the existence of passages that invite a subjectivist reading.

But the question remains, exactly what does Kant mean by ‘appearance’ (Erscheinung)? Can I speak of this Appearance? Is this Appearance the visible surface of my desk? Is it numerically identical to what F sees when she looks at the desk? (Surely it is, since you claim it is “public, intersubjectively accessible” – and in what passage does Kant say that Appearances are ‘public’ and ‘intersubjectively accessible’? What are the German terms corresponding to the English?)

[Simon Jones]

On my daily commute I'm currently listening to Roger Scruton's little book Kant: A Very Short Introduction, becoming so befuddled in places I wonder if I'll miss my exit one of these days.

This blog entry has been immensely helpful in making sense of Scruton, and hence of Kant, and I thank our host for it.

It seems you're in agreement with Scruton on the interpration of Kant. I wonder if you've read the book and have any thoughts on it, or of Scruton as a philospher more generally?

[oz the ostrich]

There also remains the strange passage (A377-8) that I referred you to earlier.

They [the objections of the idealist] drive us by main force, unless we mean to contradict ourselves in our commonest assertions, to view all our perceptions, whether we call them inner or outer, as a consciousness only of what is dependent on our sensibility.

Set aside the reference to ‘commonest assertions’, which I do not understand.

My perception of the surface of my desk is, according to Kant, “a consciousness only of what is dependent on [my] sensibility. So what I am conscious of, namely the black surface of the desk, is dependent on my sensibility? How is that consistent with the visible surface of the desk being a public object, namely an object that is numerically identical with what F is conscious of when she looks at the desk? I don’t get it.

In case you object that Kant means the consciousness of the surface which is dependent on my sensibility, I reply: that is not what Kant says. He says consciousness of what, i.e. there is the consciousness, and there is what the consciousness is of. And that would be the surface of the desk: what else?

[BV]

Simon Jones,

I am happy that my post was of some use to you.

I like Scruton's conservatism but I haven't read any of his books. only some articles. My impression, which may be inaccurate, is that he is more of a publiic intellectual than a philosopher strictly speaking. I read what I could of the Kant book over at Amazon, but the portion reproduced there was merely biographical.

Thank you for your comment.

[oz the ostrich]

Let’s start with sensation. Kant writes:

The effect of an object on the capacity for representation (Vorstellungsfähigkeit), insofar as [B34] we are affected by it, is sensation (Empfindung). That intuition (Anschauung) which is related to the [A20] object through sensation is called empirical. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called appearance (Erscheinung).

Question: is sensation ‘intersubjective’? If so, then my sensation is also F’s sensation. They are one in number. That does not seem right.