Category: Kant

On Anselmian or ‘Perfect Being’ Theology

Tom O. writes,
I was wondering if you have time to weigh in on the following problem. I take it you subscribe to perfect being theology as a constraint on our theorizing about God’s nature. For example, you write, “God is the absolute, and no absolute worth its salt is a contingent being. No absolute just happens to exist. it is built into the divine job description that God be a necessary being…”. Here, it looks to me like you’re endorsing a prior conception of what God must be like (‘absolute’) in order to infer that God must be a necessary being. 
 
Actually, Tom, I do not subscribe to 'perfect being' theology, as I explain below.   I do, however, have a prior conception of what God must be like to be 'worth his salt,' i.e., to satisfy the exigencies built into our concept of God.  God is the Absolute, and nothing could be the Absolute if it merely happened to exist. So God, if he exists, exists of absolute metaphysical necessity, and he has this necessity from himself, and not from another, a se non ab alio. It follows that if God does not exist, then he is impossible. Thus  what we should not say is that God necessarily exists, for this way of putting it implies that he does exist. We should say that God is necessarily non-contingent, i.e. necessarily such that, if he exists, he exists  necessarily (in all possible worlds in the Leibnizian patois), and if he does not exist, then he is impossible (exists in no possible world in the same façon de parler.) 
 
Now, suppose someone endorses a conception of God as a limited being. Maybe God is not all powerful, or he is dependent in some way (and so not a se in a strong sense- think pantheism) or he is contingent in some way. This view of God obviously parts ways with perfect being theology. But I want to know how the proponent of perfect being theology will argue that conceptions of God as a limited being are deficient. The very conception of God (as limited or absolute/perfect) is at issue here. So, the proponent of perfect being theology can’t assume God is the absolute to then argue a limited God is deficient. What criterion could he possibly appeal to in order to sort ‘genuine’ conceptions of God from ‘deficient’ conceptions?
 

In the context of this discussion there are three approaches to God that we ought to distinguish: the limited being approach, the perfect being approach, and  the beyond-perfect-being approach of Aquinas, Barry Miller, and myself, et al.  As for the limited being approach, I will just say for now that there might be one or more limited gods, but that they don't interest me. What interests me is whether there is an unsourced Source of the being, intelligibility, and value of everything other than it, a being of limitless perfection, return to which or fellowship with which, or participation in the being of which, would bring the ultimate in human felicity.  That is my concept of God, and not just mine.  My question then becomes: does anything in reality answer to that concept?  

I have no interest in limited gods. I have no interest in affirming them or denying them. There might even be one or more in addition to the unlimited God; they might serve as emissaries between the unlimited God and us.  But they would not be worthy of worship or worthy of my ultimate concern because my ultimate beatitude and need for final meaning could not be secured  by them.

My interest is whether we need to go beyond perfect being theology.  I say we do and that PBT is a limited approach to the divine.

The anthropomorphism of perfect being (Anselmian) theology

One approach to God and his attributes is Anselmian: God is "that that which no greater can be conceived."  God is the greatest conceivable being, the most perfect of all beings, the being possessing all perfections.  But what is a perfection?  A perfection is not just any old (positive, non-Cambridge) property, but a great-making property. Some of these properties admit of degrees while some do not. To say of God that he is the ens perfectissimum, the most perfect of all beings, is to say that he possesses all great- making properties, and of those that admit of degrees, he possesses them to the highest degree.

For example, power admits of degrees; so while Socrates and God are both powerful, only God is maximally powerful.  Wisdom too admits of degrees; so while both Socrates and God are both wise, only God is maximally wise.  And the same holds for love and mercy and moral goodness.  Many of the divine attributes, then, are maxima of attributes possessed by humans.

Are Socrates and God wise in the same sense of 'wise'?  This follows if wisdom in God is just the highest degree of the same attribute that is found in some humans.  Accordingly, the predicate 'wise' is being used univocally in 'Socrates is wise' and 'God is wise' despite the fact that God but not Socrates is all-wise.  Bear in mind that the sense of a predicate is not to be confused with the property (attribute) the predicate is used to express. Suppose we distinguish three 'planes': the linguistic, the semantic, and the ontic. Predicates inhabit the linguistic plane, senses the semantic plane, and properties the ontic plane. 

Thus a commitment to univocity appears to be entailed by the Anselmian or perfect-being approach.  The predicate 'wise' is being used in the very same sense when applied to Socrates and when applied to God. 

The polar opposite of univocity is equivocity.  The phenomenon of equivocity is illustrated by this pair of sentences: 'Socrates is wise,' 'Kamala is in no wise fit to be president.'  The meaning or sense of 'wise' is totally different across the two sentences.  Midway between univocity and equivocity there is analogicity.  Perhaps an example of an analogical use of 'wise' would be in application to Guido the mafioso.  He's a wise guy; he knows the score; but he is not a wise man like Socrates, though he is like the latter in being knowledgeable about some things.   But I mention analogy only to set it aside.

My thesis: an Anselmian approach to God and his attributes such as we find in Alvin Plantinga and T. V. Morris and the rest of the 'perfect being' theists is anthropomorphic. One takes God to have the very same great-making attributes or properties that (some) humans have, but to the maximal degree.  Socrates is benevolent and merciful; God is omnibenevolent and all-merciful.  And so on.  We could say that God is omni-qualified or omni-propertied with respect to the great-making properties. If we take this tack, we approach God from the side of man, assimilating God to man.  God is 'made' (conceptualized) in the image and likeness of man, as a sort of superman, but with defects removed and attributes maximized. 

This anthropomorphism is very different from the God-is-an-anthropomorphic-projection thesis of Ludwig Feuerbach.  Feuerbach's thesis entails the nonexistence of God. Perfect being anthropomorphism does not. 

Well, what is wrong with anthropomorphism?  The problem with it is that it fails to do justice to God's absolute transcendence and ineffability.  If the difference between creatures and God is only a matter of degree, then God would not be worthy of worship. He would be "the greatest thing around" and no doubt an object of wonder and admiration, but not an appropriate object of worship. (See Barry Miller, A Most Unlikely God, U. of  Notre Dame Press, 1996, p. 3)

God is the Absolute.  I take that to be axiomatic. That God is the Absolute is built into the very concept of God whether or not anything in reality answers to that concept.  Starting from the concept, one cannot prove (demonstrate) that God exists. Kant is surely right that the ontological argument "from mere concepts" (aus blosser Begriffen) is not valid. To understand what I just wrote you must understand that the concept of X is not to be confused with the nature of X. Natures (quiddities, essences) are situated on the ontic plane mentioned above; concepts are either finite-mind-dependent in which case they cannot exist in themselves but only in minds, or else,they exist in themselves on the semantic plane, which I distinguished above from the ontic plane. One could say that  the nature of God entails (or rather is) the existence of God.  That, I believe, is true. But that truth does not help us prove the existence of God unless we have a rationally coercive reason to think that our concept of God is an adequate concept, i.e., one that captures the essence or nature of God. But we have no such concept. The doctor angelicus will back me up on this.  In God, essence and existence are one. To capture God's essence in a concept, therefore, would require squeezing God himself into a concept. That would be like emptying the Pacific Ocean, or any ocean, into a hole in the sand at the seashore.

God is radically other than creatures.  His attributes cannot be 'in series' with human degreed attributes even if at the limits of these series.  God is not just another thing that exists  and possesses properties in the way creatures possess properties.   

How Could God be Ineffable?

The mystically inclined say that God is ineffable.  The ineffable is the inexpressible, the unspeakable. Merriam-Webster:

 Ineffable comes from ineffābilis, which joins the prefix in-, meaning "not," with the adjective effābilis, meaning "capable of being expressed." Effābilis comes from effārī, "to speak out," which in turn comes from ex- and fārī, meaning “to speak.”

But: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 7) Does it follow that there is nothing ineffable, inexpressible, unspeakable? Some will draw this conclusion; Hegel is one. Ludwig the Tractarian, however, does not draw this conclusion: 

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (Tractatus, 6.522)

God is the prime example of das Unaussprechliche. But if we cannot say anything about God, then we cannot say any of the following: he exists; he does not exist; he is transcendent; he is immanent; he is all-knowing; he is not all-knowing; he has attributes; he has no attributes; he is ineffable; he is not ineffable; and so on.

Is this a problem? Maybe not.  

Consider any mundane thing, a rock, say.  Can you put it into words? Can you capture its existence and its haecceity (its non-qualitative thisness) in concepts?  You cannot. At most you can capture  conceptually only its quidditative determinations, all of which are multiply exemplifiable or repeatable. But the thing itself is unrepeatable and escapes conceptual capture.  The discursive intellect cannot grasp it. Es ist unbegreifbar.  It cannot be 'effed' linguistically or conceptually.  Individuum ineffabile est.

If you can see that the individual qua individual is conceptually ineffable, why do you balk at talk of the divine ineffability? If the haecceity of a grain of sand or a speck of dust cannot be conceptualized, then a fortiori for the super-eminent haecceity and ipseity of the super-eminent Individual who is not a mere  individual among individuals but Individuality itself.   

The Ineffable One cannot fall under any of our ordinary concepts. We can however, point to it by using a limit concept (Grenzbegriff).  A limit concept is not an ordinary concept. Note that we do have the concept of that which is beyond all concepts. (If we did not, this discourse would be nonsense when it plainly is not, pace Wittgenstein.) That smacks of self-contradiction, but the contradiction is avoided by distinguishing between ordinary and limit concepts. 

So, while remaining within the ineluctable discursivity of our discursive intellects, I am able to point beyond the sphere of the discursive intellect into the Transdiscursive.  You can understand this by analogy to the transdiscursivity of a stick, a stone, a dog, a bone, a bird, a turd, or any part thereof.

How do I gain epistemic access to a mundane particular such as a stick or a stone in its unrepeatable particularity?  By sensible intuition (sinnliche Anschauung in Kant's sense).  We do it all the time. And so, by a second analogy, we can understand how epistemic access to the Absolute and Ineffable One is to be had: by intellectual intuition or mystical gnosis. 

Dem-Fems for Kamala

Miranda Devine:

As polls show America’s young men are lurching rightward at a rapid pace, the Democratic brand has finally evolved into the party of scolding shrews, nagging Karens and “preachy females,” as Dem dinosaur James Carville calls them.

Its image is tied to a type of unserious, self-involved, neurotic, dogmatic Dem-fem who insists on telling you her pronouns and whose highest goal is abortion on demand right up until the moment of birth. 

She is terrified of men unless they are transgender or submissive “white dudes for Kamala” with man buns. 

Now that Scranton Joe is out of the picture and Kamala is at the helm, the feminizing trend is accelerating the party into certain electoral oblivion (with the obvious caveat for election fraud). 

I am glad that the astute Miranda threw in the caveat. After all, we know a priori that the Dems will cheat their  asses off come November. If the end justifies the means, why not? It worked last time, so they figure it will work again. Compare the race card. The Dems have been playing it for years despite all the respectful, careful, and eminently sane explanations by conservatives that our positions are in no defensible sense of the term 'racist.' Why then don't the lefties listen to sweet reason and stop playing the card? Why don't they be nice and play fair? Because it works for them in attaining and maintaining power and control, which is what they are out for first, foremost, and forever. Power to do what? To tear everything down, so that, somehow, by some magic, utopia will arise. 

For the same reason they can be expected to cheat in the upcoming election.  You need to wake up from 'woke' and realize that our political enemies are just that enemies. They are enemies not just of us, but of the attainable good. They are not good people. I am mainly referring to the cadre Left (the core or skeletal drivers of the movement comprising the true believers, in Eric Hoffer's sense, and the cynics) and not the much larger group of useful idiots, who are morally and intellectually obtuse mediocrities.

It is foolish to underestimate the Kamala crazies, as Newt Gingrich has pointed out.

…………….

If any Kant aficionados are lurking about, my use of a priori above is the relative sense of the term Kant refers to in the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason (1787) at B2:

. . . it has been customary to say , even of much knowledge that has been derived from empirical sources, that we have it or are capable of having it a priori, meaning thereby that we do not derive it immediately from experience, but from a universal rule — a rule which is itself, however, borrowed from experience. Thus we would say of a man who  undermined the foundations of his house, that he might have known a priori that it would fall, that is, that he need not have waited for the experience of its actually falling. But he still could not know this completely a priori. For he first had to learn through experience that bodies are heavy, and therefore fall when their supports are withdrawn. (NKS tr., p. 43)

Rise and Shine

I quit the bed of sloth at two this morning.  I slept in a bit. But I understand that not everyone prefers the monkish life. Kant arose at five. It's now 5:30 or so. Rise and shine with Manny!  Or at least with Boston.  If this '70s tune doesn't get you bangin' on all eight, you need a brain re-wire. 

And if this first post of the day is not yet meaty enough for you, there's more:

"The bed is a nest for a whole flock of illnesses." (Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, tr. Gregor, p. 183)

I read Kant and about Kant at an impressionable age, and it really is a pleasure plowing through his texts again as I have been doing recently. I suspect my early rising goes back to my having read, at age 20, that Kant was wont to retire at 10 pm and arise at 5 am.

Soon enough, however, I was out-Kanting Kant with a 4 am arisal from the nocturnal nest. And when I moved out here to the Zone, 4 became 2:30. (A Zone Man must make an early start especially on outdoor activities in the summer before Old Sol gets too uppity.)

2:30 became 2:00, the time the Trappist monks of Tom Merton's day got up. I don't know whether the Trappist regimen is as rigorous today as it was in the '40s and '50s, and I'm not sure I want to know given the ubiquity of decadence these days. But then 2:00 became 1:30 which is now my preferred time of arisal.  

I don't use an alarm clock. I have an alarm cat. Max, a husky tuxie, jumps over me as he did this morning, more for his benefit than for mine: he wants his treats.  He used to jump on my chest, but I cured him of that with a slap or two.

Back to Kant! The Aporetics of Appearance

Ed Buckner writes and I respond in blue:

1) The expression “this table” refers to something, i.e. has a referent.

BV: Yes.

2) What it refers to is extended in space and persists through time.

BV: No doubt. (1) and (2) are 'datanic claims' in my terminology. They simply must be accommodated by any theory worth its salt.

A Kantian will sum up (1) and (2) by saying that 'this table' refers to something empirically real. 'Empirically' means via the senses. To say that the table is empirically real is to say that it exists independently of any particular perceiver such as Ed and his mental states, and is given via the outer senses (sight, touch, etc.).  It follows, of course, that the table is not an object of inner sense. For if it were an object of inner sense, it could not be in space. Ed's perceivings, which he can become aware of by inner sense, are in time, but not in space. Because the table is in space, it is not in Ed's mind, i.e., it is not one of his mental states.

3) Kant claims that a thing in itself is not extended in space and does not persist through time.

BV: Kant does indeed say that, but what does it mean? On one interpretation, what Kant means by the above claim is that a thing such as a table, when considered as a thing in itself, and thus not as it appears to us under the epistemic conditions under which alone it can appear to us, is not extended in space and does not appear in time.

On this interpretation, promoted by such noted Kant scholars as Gerold Prauss and Henry Allison, there are not two tables, a phenomenal table and a noumenal table; there is one table considered in two ways. Phenomena and things in themselves are not two types of thing, but two different ways of considering the same things. It is not as if, 'behind' the phenomenal table, there is a 'table in itself': there is only one table  viewed either from the human (finite) point of view or from the absolute point of view of an intellectus archetypus.

One advantage of this interpretation is that it allows the accommodation of  Kant's repeated insistent claim that he is not a Berkeleyan idealist. For Berkeley, spatial things such as tables are in the mind. For Kant, they are not in the mind, for the following reason. What is in the mind is accessible to inner sense, but not to outer sense. Tables and such, however, are accessible only to outer sense. So tables and spatial things generally are not in the mind. They are in space outside the mind.  It must be understood, of course, that for Kant space is a mere a priori form of our sensibility, and thus one of the epistemic conditions above mentioned.

4) Therefore what “this table” refers to is not a thing in  itself.

BV: The validity of the inference is questionable. On the above interpretation, what "this table" refers to is not a thing as it would be when considered apart from the epistemic conditions under which alone it can appear to us. It refers to a thing under the epistemic conditions under which alone it can appear to us. It could therefore be said that what "this table" refers to is indeed that table itself, albeit under the epistemic conditions under which alone it can appear to us.  These conditions include space and time, the a priori conditions of our sensibility (Sinnlichkeit), and the categories, the a priori forms of our understanding (Verstand).

I cannot fault these. In which case, what does “this table” refer to, for a Kantian?

BV: "This table," in line with the above interpretation, refers to a table under the epistemic conditions (space, time, and categories) under which alone it can appear to us. It thus refers to a phenomenon or appearance (Erscheinung). But this phenomenon is not a private mental content of a particular perceiver.  It is an intersubjectively accessible thing, the table in our example.  

So, from a Kantian point of view, 'this table' refers to a table which to employ a signature Kantian phrase, is "empirically real but transcendentally ideal." 

Pace Ed Buckner, and other English commentators, Kant is not a Berkeleyan idealist. This is not to say that that Kant's transcendental idealism is in the the clear. It remains problematic for reasons we cannot go into now.

Spherical Triangles as Incongruent Counterparts?

Fig31.png

Over the last 24 hours I have been obsessing over Kant's spherical triangles.  He claims that they are incongruent counterparts.  Now I understand how a hand and its mirror image are incongruent counterparts.  (A right hand's mirror image is a left hand.) But it is not clear to me how Kant's spherical triangles are incongruent counterparts. Supplement the above diagram with a second lower triangle that shares its base (an arc of the equator) with that of the upper triangle and whose sides are two arcs whose vertex is the south pole.

David Brightly's comment is the best I received in the earlier thread. (He works in Info Tech and I believe he has an advanced degree in mathematics.) He writes,

Not clear to me either, Bill. Why does Kant resort to spherical triangles? [To show the existence of incongruent counterparts.] Consider first two right triangles in the plane with vertices (0,0), (3,0), (0,4) in triangle A and (0,0), (3,0), (0,-4) in B. In plane geometry A and B are considered congruent, not by translation or rotation in the plane but rotation out of the plane ('flipping') with their shared edge as axis. Now think of these triangles on the sphere with edges of length 3 along the equator and those of length 4 on a meridian. The lower triangle cannot be flipped into congruence with the upper—it curves 'the wrong way'. Congruence on the sphere is more restrictive than congruence in the plane. But they are mirror images of one another in the equatorial plane. Likewise, Kant's isosceles triangles cannot be flipped into registration. Has he just overlooked that they can be slid on the sphere into alignment?

As Brightly quite rightly points out, "The lower triangle cannot be flipped into congruence with the upper — it curves 'the wrong way'."  That was clear to me all along.  My thought was that if you rotate the lower triangle through 180 degrees so that its southern vertex points north, it would fit right over the upper triangle. I think that is what David means when he writes, "they can be slid on the sphere into alignment."

In other words, the lower triangle needn't be rotated off the surface of the sphere with the axis of rotation being the common base, it suffices to slide the triangles into alignment and thus into congruence along the surface of the sphere.  

Therefore: Kant's spherical triangles are not incongruent counterparts or enantiomorphs.

Now David, have I understood you? I am not a mathematician and I might be making a mistake.

Kant, Spherical Triangles, and Incongruent Counterparts

Buckner demands an argument from incongruent counterparts to the ideality of space. But before we get to that, I am having trouble understanding how the 'spherical triangles' Kant mentions in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, sec. 13,  are incongruent counterparts. Perhaps my powers of visualization are weak. Maybe someone can help me.

I understand how a hand and its mirror image are incongruent counterparts. If I hold up my right hand before a mirror what I see is a left hand.  As Kant says, "I cannot put such a hand as is seen in the glass in the place of its original; for if this is a right hand, that in the glass is a left one . . . ." (p. 13)  That is clear to me.

Now visualize a sphere and two non-plane 'spherical triangles' the common base of which is an arc of the sphere's equator. The remaining two sides of the one triangle meet at the north pole; the remaining two sides of the other at the south pole.  The two triangles are exact counterparts, equal in all such internal respects as lengths of sides, angles, etc.  They are supposed to be incongruent in that "the one cannot be put in place of the other (that is, upon the opposite hemisphere)." (ibid.)  That is not clear to me.

Imagine the southern triangle detached from the sphere and rotated through 180 degrees so that the south vertex is pointing north and the base is directly south. Now imagine the southern triangle place on top of the northern triangle.  To my geometrical intuition they are congruent!

So, as I see it, hands and gloves are chiral but Kant's spherical triangles are not.

Wikipedia:

In geometry, a figure is chiral (and said to have chirality) if it is not identical to its mirror image, or, more precisely, if it cannot be mapped to its mirror image by rotations and translations alone. An object that is not chiral is said to be achiral.

A chiral object and its mirror image are said to be enantiomorphs. The word chirality is derived from the Greek χείρ (cheir), the hand, the most familiar chiral object; the word enantiomorph stems from the Greek ἐναντίος (enantios) 'opposite' + μορφή (morphe) 'form'.

Notes on Idealism, Realism, Frege, and Prichard

Ed Buckner sent me a pdf the first couple pages of which I reproduce below. Bibliographical data here. Emphases added. My commentary is in blue. 

…………………………………….

Twentieth Century Oxford Realism

Mark Eli Kalderon and Charles Travis

1 Introduction

This is a story of roughly a century of Oxford philosophy told by two outsiders.
Neither of us has ever either studied or taught there. Nor are we specially privy to
some oral tradition. Our story is based on texts. It is, moreover, a very brief, and
very highly selective, story. We mean to trace the unfolding, across roughly the
last century, of one particular line of thought—a sort of anti-idealism, and also a
sort of anti-empiricism. By focussing in this way we will, inevitably, omit, or give
short shrift to, more than one more than worthwhile Oxford philosopher. We will
mention a few counter-currents to the main flow of 20th century Oxford thought.
But much must be omitted entirely.

Our story begins with a turn away from idealism. Frege’s case against idealism, so far as it exists in print, was made, for the most part, between 1893 (in the preface to Grundgesetze volume 1) and 1918-1919 (in “Der Gedanke”). Within that same time span, at Oxford, John Cook Wilson, and his student, H.A. Prichard, developed, independently, their own case against idealism (and for what might
plausibly be called—and they themselves regarded as—a form of “realism”). Because of the way in which Cook Wilson left a written legacy it is difficult at best to give exact dates for the various components of this view. But the main ideas were probably in place by 1904, certainly before 1909, which marked the publication of Prichard’s beautiful study, “Kant’s Theory of Knowledge”. It is also quite probably seriously misleading to suggest that either Cook Wilson or Prichard produced a uniform corpus from the whole of their career—uniform either in content or in quality. But if we select the brightest spots, we find a view which overlaps with Frege’s at most key points, and which continued to be unfolded in the main lines of thought at Oxford for the rest of the century.

Frege’s main brief against idealism could be put this way: It placed the scope of experience (or awareness) outside of the scope of judgement. In doing that, it left us nothing to judge about. A central question about perception is: How can it make the world bear on what one is to think—how can it give me what are then my reasons for thinking things one way or another? The idealist answer to that, Frege showed, would have to be, “It cannot”.

BV: This is not at all clear. An example would be nice. Let me supply one. I see a tree. The seeing is a perceiving and this perceiving is a mental state of  me, the perceiver.  I see that the tree is green.  Seeing that the tree is green I come  to think that the tree is "one way or another," e.g., green as opposed to not green.  The authors seem to be asking the following question: How can perceiving something — a tree in my example — make the world give me the perceiver a reason for thinking the tree to be "one way or another," green for example?

This is a very strange question, one that has no clear sense.  Or at least I don't know what the authors are asking. If the question has no clear sense, then the supposedly idealist answer has no clear sense either. The authors are presumably defending some sort of realism about the objects of sense perception. If so, then it is not my perceiving that makes the world do anything. Their question ought to be: how do physical things in the external world, things that exist and have (most of) the properties they have independently of my or anyone's perceivings, make our perceivings of these things have the content that they in fact have? How does the green tree over there bring it about that I am now having an experience as of a green tree? Or is this perhaps the very question the authors are trying to ask their convoluted way?

But let's read on.

What, in Frege’s terms, “belongs to the contents of my consciousness”—what, for its presence needs someone to be aware of it, where, further, that someone must be me—cannot, just in being as it is, be what might be held, truly, to be thus and so. (This is one point Prichard retained throughout his career, and which, later on, he directed against others who he termed “sense-datum theorists”. It is also a point Cook Wilson directed, around 1904, against Stout (see section 4).

BV:  There is a solid point here, but it needs to be put clearly. The tree is in space and is green. No content of consciousness is in space or is green. Therefore, the tree is not a content of consciousness. This syllogism refutes a form of subjective or psychological idealism. But who holds it? Certainly not Kant. But let's leave Kant out of the  discussion for now. More important than Koenigsbergian exegesis is the deep and fascinating question of idealism versus realism.

What I said in the preceding paragraph needs a bit of refining. If I see a tree, then I am aware of something. That awareness-of or consciousness-of is an episode in my conscious, mental life.  So it is appropriately referred to as a 'content of consciousness.' Now consider that awareness-of just as such.  (Of course, you cannot consider my awareness, but you can consider your own similar but numerically different awareness.) Is it green? No. It is colorless. The awareness-of, as such, is not the sort of 'thing' that could have a color.  

The awareness of green is not a green awareness.  If it were green it would have to be extended in space. No color without extension. But the awareness-of, though it is in time, is not in space.  So here we have a content of consciousness that is neither colored nor in space. 

We should all will agree, then,  that a perceiving as of a green tree is not a green perceiving. This is so even if the perceiving is not merely as of the tree, but of it in the sense that implies that there exists a tree that is being perceived. Again, all colors are extended in space. But no mental act is extended in space. Ergo, no mental act is colored. A fortiori if mental acts  are as G. E. Moore once said, "diaphanous."  

What about the content of a mental act? It too is a 'content of consciousness.' Macbeth had an hallucinatory visual experience as of a dagger. The dagger-appearance is what I am now calling the content. It is clearly distinct (though not separable) from the hallucinatory experiencing.  The hallucinatory act/experiencing is not spatially extended.  What about the dagger-appearance?  Did it not seem extended to Macbeth? Don't pink rats look to be extended in space by that drunks who hallucinate them? Yes they do.  What we can say here is that while the dagger-appearance is phenomenologically extended, it is not extended in objective space. 

But there is a deeper reason for opposing subjective idealism. This I believe to be the solid point that Prichard makes.

If I judge a tree to be green, I judge it to be green whether or not I or anyone so judge it.  So if the tree is green, it is green in itself whether or not there are any perceivers.  The point is quite general: to judge of anything x that it is F is to judge that it is F in itself whether or not there are any judgers. It doesn't matter whether the judgment is true or false: a judgment that x is F purports to lay bare the way things are independently of judgers, whether or not in fact things are as the judgment states. 

So if I say that the perceiving is green, I thereby commit myself to saying that the perceiving is green in itself whether or not there are any perceivers.  But it is contradictory to maintain that something that can exist only as a content of consciousness, and thus cannot exist in itself, can also exist in itself apart from any consciousness.

What I am calling 'the solid point 'puts paid to any form of idealism that identifies physical objects with contents of consciousness if those contents exist only in contingent minded organisms such as human animals.   If there exists a tree that I perceive, it is as little in my consciousness as it is inside my head. But please note that the point just made presupposes the reality of the external world and thus begs the question against those forms of idealism that avoid the mistakes that subjective/psychological idealists make.

So, in particular, it was crucial to Frege that a thought could not be an idea (“Vorstellung”), in the sense of “idea” in which to be one is to belong to someone’s consciousness. The positive sides of these coins are: all there is for us to judge about—all there is which, in being as it is might be a way we could judge it to be—is that environment we all jointly inhabit; to be a thought is, intrinsically, to be sharable and communicable. All these are central points in Cook Wilson’s, and Prichard’s, Oxford realism. So, as they both held (early in the century), perception must afford awareness of, and relate us to, objects in our cohabited environment.

BV: The authors seem to be saying that it is not about ideas, Vorstellungen, contents of consciousness, etc. that we make judgments, but about the common physical environment in which we human animals live.  This remains vague, however, if we aren't told what "the environment" is.  Do they mean particular things in the physical world, or are they referring to the physical world as a whole? And while it is true that thoughts (either Frege's Gedanken or something very much like them) are communicable and thus sharable — unlike contents of consciousness that are numerically different for numerically different people — what does this have to do with "the environment"? Fregean and Frege-like thoughts are abstract objects; hence, not to be found in the physical "environment."  Of course, for Frege, thoughts/propositions are not contents of consciousness; it does not follow, however, they are in the "environment."  There are in Frege's third realm, that of abstracta. (I promise to avoid tasteless jokes about the supposedly anti-Semitic Fege and the Third Reich.) 

There is another point which Prichard, at least, shared with Frege. As Prichard
put it:

There seems to be no way of distinguishing perception and conception
as the apprehension of different realities except as the apprehension
of the individual and the universal respectively. Distinguished in this
way, the faculty of perception is that in virtue of which we apprehend
the individual, and the faculty of conception is that power of reflection
in virtue of which a universal is made the explicit object of thought.
(Prichard, 1909, 44)

Compare Frege:

A thought always contains something which reaches out beyond the
particular case, by means of which it presents this to consciousness as
falling under some given generality. (1882: Kernsatz 4) But don’t we see that the sun has set? And don’t we also thereby see that this is true? That the sun has set is no object which emits rays which arrive in our eyes, is no visible thing like the sun itself. That the sun has set is recognized as true on the basis of sensory input. (1918: 64)

For the sun to have set is a way for things to be; that it has set is the way things are according to a certain thought. A way for things to be is a generality, instanced
by things being as they are (where the sun has just set). Recognizing its instancing
is recognizing the truth of a certain thought; an exercise of a faculty of thought.

By contrast, what instances a way for things to be, what makes for that thought’s
truth, does not itself have that generality Frege points to in a thought—any more
than, on a different level, which Frege calls “Bedeutung”, what falls under a (first-level) concept might be the sort of thing things fall under. What perception affords is awareness of the sort of thing that instances a way for things to be. Perception’s role is thus, for Frege, as for Prichard, to bring the particular, or individual, in view—so as, in a favorable case, to make recognizable its instancing (some of) the ways for things to be it does. The distinction Prichard points to here is as fundamental both to him and to Frege as is, for Frege, the distinction between objects and concepts.

BV: Now things are now getting interestingly 'aporetic.' How do I know that the sun has set? I see the sun, and I see the horizon, but I don't literally see (with my eyes) that the sun has set. If the italicized words pick out an entity, it is an invisible one. As Frege says, "That the sun has set is no object that emits rays . . . ."

How do I know that the tree is green? I see the tree, and I see green at the tree, but I don't see that the tree is green. Why not? Well, 'That tree is green' is logically equivalent to 'That green tree exists.' So if I can see that the tree is green, then I can see that the green tree exists. But existence is not empirically detectable. I can sense green, but I cannot sense existence. So I cannot see that the green tree exists.  Therefore, I cannot see that the tree is green.  Existence and property-possession are invisible. More generally, they are insensible, and not because of our sensory limitations, but because existence and property-possession are not empirically detectable by any manner of critter or by any device. 

And yet I know that the tree is green and I know that the sun has set. But how? Frege's answer, "on the basis of sensory input" is lame.  Sure, there has to be sensory input for me  to know what I know in these cases, but how does it work? Such input is necessary, but it cannot be sufficient.  Here is what Frege says in Der Gedanke:

Das Haben von Sinneseindruecken ist zwar noetig zum Sehen der Dinge, aber nicht hinreichend. Was noch hinzukommen muss, ist nichts Sinnliches. (Logische Untersuchungen, 51)

To be sure, the having of sensory impressions is necessary for seeing things, but not sufficient. What yet must be added is nothing sensory.

Necessary, because seeing (with the eyes) is a sensory function that cannot occur without sensory data, which is to say, sensory givenness, sensory input. Not sufficient, because what I need to know to know that that the tree is green, is that the physical individual/object does in reality instantiate the concept/property. The problem is that I cannot see the copulative linkage in the green tree any more than I can see the existence of the green tree. For again, to see either the linkage or the existence I would have to be able to sense them when there is no sensory awareness of either.  

What Frege adds that is not sensory is the thought/proposition. But this item is off by itself in a platonic topos ouranios. How on Earth or in Plato's Heaven can Fregean thoughts avail anything for the solution of our problem? To know that the tree is green in reality I need to know the sublunary unity of thing and property here below. How is that knowledge aided by the positing of a 'ouranic' item, the thought/proposition, whose subject constituent is an abstract item as abstract as the thought itself? The Fregean thought brings together a subject-constituent, a sense, with a predicate-constituent, also a sense.  It does not bring together the concrete tree and its properties.

What the authors say above on behalf of Frege and Prichard is thus no answer at all. We are told, "Perception’s role is thus, for Frege, as for Prichard, to bring the particular, or individual, in view—so as, in a favorable case, to make recognizable its instancing (some of) the ways for things to be it does."  Are they joking?  This glides right past the problem.  What I need to know to know that the tree is green is the linkage or togetherness of individual and property in the thing in the external world. The thing is a this-such or a something-which. You cannot split the this from the such.  You cannot split perception from conception assigning to the first the job of supplying bare individuals and assigning to the second the job of providing universals.  For the problem, again, is 'methectical,' a problem of methexis: how do sensory individual and  intelligible universal meet to form the sublunary this-such?

Kant has an answer (whatever you think of it): the synthesis of individual and property/concept is achieved by the transcendental unity of apperception! 

I will have more to say about this in a later post.

Against H. A. Prichard and the ‘Standard Picture’ of Kant

 In an earlier post, drawing on the work of Henry E. Allison, I wrote:

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 is 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 [in the specifically Kantian sense] cannot be assimilated to perceptual illusions in the way Prichard and the "standard picture" try to assimilate them. 

In this entry I will expand upon the above by taking a close look at the stretch of text in H.A. Prichard's Kant's Theory of Knowledge (1909) in which he discusses the straight stick that appears bent when immersed in water.  This is a classical example of perceptual illusion.  It illustrates how an appearance (in one sense of the term) may distort reality (in one sense of the term).  Call the first the A1 sense and the second the R1 sense. My claim, of course, is that this empirical A1-R1 distinction is not the same as Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves, and that anyone who, like Prichard, thinks otherwise has simply failed to understand what Kant is maintaining.  Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves is the distinction between empirically real, intersubjectively accessible, public, causally interacting things in space and time, on the one hand, and those same things considered apart from the a priori conditions of our sensibility.  The Earth and its one natural satellite, the Moon, are examples of phenomena in Kant's sense.  Neither is a private, mental item in a particular mind as a modification of such a mind or an item internal to it. The Earth and the Moon are not mental phenomena in any Cartesian, Humean, or Brentanian sense, but empirically real, physical things. But though they are empirically real, they are transcendentally ideal when considered independently of the conditions of our sensibility.

In sum, there are two distinctions. The first is the distinction between private mental contents of particular minds and real things external to such minds. For example, Ed is enjoying a visual experience of his by-now-famous desk.  Neither the desk as a whole nor any part of it is literally in Ed's mind, let alone in his head. The desk, like his head and the rest of his body, is in the publicly accessible external world.  Now let 'A1' denote Ed's experience/experiencing whereby his desk appears to him, and let 'R1' denote the desk itself which is external to Ed's mind/consciousness. Prichard's mistake is to conflate this A1-R1 distinction with Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves. The R1 of the first distinction is the A2 of Kant's distinction which, again, is the distinction between intersubjectively accessible objects in space and time and those same objects viewed independently of the conditions of our sensibility.

I now turn to Chapter IV of Prichard's book. The chapter is entitled "Phenomena and Things in Themselves."  Prichard takes Kant to be saying that spatial and temporal relations are "relations which belong to things only as perceived." (p. 79.)  Prichard goes on to say, "The thought of a property or a relation that belongs to things as perceived involves a contradiction."  He brings up the submerged stick which is in reality straight, but appears to a perceiver as bent. Prichard then makes the unexceptionable point that 

. . . the assertion that something is so and so implies that it is so and so in itself, whether it be perceived or not, and therefore the assertion that something is so and so to us as perceiving, though not in itself, is a contradiction in terms. 

This is certainly true. After I explain why it is true, I will explain why it has nothing to do with Kant.  One cannot assert of anything x that it is F without thereby asserting that x is F in reality.  What one asserts to be the case one asserts to be the case whether or not anyone asserts it.  (Of course, it doesn't follow that what one asserts to be the case is the case. All that follows is that what one asserts to be the case purports to be the case independently of anyone's act of assertion.  Saying this I am merely unpacking the concept of assertion.) So if I assert of x that it is bent, then I assert that x is bent in itself or in reality whether or not there are any assertors or perceivers.  To assert that x is bent is to assert that a mind-independent item is bent. (Of course, it does not follow that there is a mind-independent item that is bent; all that follows is that if some item is bent or straight or has any property, then it is mind-independent.) Therefore, if I assert of an illusory appearance that it is bent, then I fall into contradiction. For what I am then asserting  is that something that is mind-dependent — because it is illusory — is not mind-dependent but exists in reality. 

This is what I take Prichard to be maintaining in the passage quoted. Thus charitably interpreted, what he is saying is (by my lights) true.  But what does this have to do with Kant? Kant is not not talking about private mental items internal to particular minds such as an illusory appearance as of a bent stick. He is not saying of such an appearance (Apparenz) or semblance (Schein) that it is the subject of spatial and temporal relations.  If he were, then he would stand refuted by Prichard's unexceptionable point. But it strains credulity to think that a great philosopher could blunder so badly. 

Note also that to read Kant as if his phenomena (Erscheinungen) in space and time are private mental phenomena is to impute to him the sophomoric absurdity that mental data which are unextended are extended as they must be if they stand in physical relations. Such an imputation would be exegetically uncharitable in excelsis.

Finally, if space and time and everything in it is mental in Prichard's sense, and internal to particular minds like ours, then the upshot would be an utterly absurd form of subjective idealism. 

…………………………………….

Further tangential ruminations.

How do I know that the visual datum is an illusory appearance? If I know that what appears to me — the immersed-stick visual datum — is illusory, then I know that what appears to me cannot be bent or straight or have any spatial property. For what is illusory does not exist, and what does not exist cannot have properties. But how do I know that the visual datum does not exist?

That is precisely what I don't know in the cases of perceptual illusion in which I am really fooled — unlike the classic stick case above that fools no adult. No adult is 'taken in' by acquatic refraction phenomena. "Damn that boatman! He gave me a bent oar!"  Here is a real-life example.

Crotalus atroxHiking in twilight, I experience a visual datum as of a rattlesnake. I jump back and say to my partner, "There's a rattler on the trail."  I assert the visual datum to be a rattler, which of course implies that in reality there is a rattler.  (And that I jumped back shows that my assertion was sincere.) A closer look, however, shows that I mistook a tree root for a snake. What I initially saw (in the phenomenological sense of 'see') was only an illusory appearance. If I then say that the illusory appearance is a rattler or is venomous, etc. then I fall into contradiction. The point is that illusory appearances do not exist and therefore cannot have properties: they cannot be bent or straight or venomous or of the species crotalus atrox, etc.

 

Guest Post: Buckner on Prichard on Kant

PRICHARD ON KANT: IN DEFENCE OF THE ANGLOSPHERE

D.E. Buckner

Bill Vallicella discusses here the ‘standard picture’ of Kant ’s transcendental idealism as a theory that affirms the unknowability of the ‘real’ (things in themselves) and relegates knowledge to the purely subjective realm of representations (appearances), adding that “P. F. Strawson and H. A. Prichard are exponents of this reading along with many others in the Anglosphere”. He argues that “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.” He develops this theme in another post here, in the context of Kant’s ‘rainbow argument’ (A45/B63).

 

Bill does not explain the Anglospheric reading. In this post, I shall outline Prichard’s objection to the rainbow argument, as set out in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909, pp. 94 ff). He objects, in effect, that the rainbow argument is an argument by analogy. Just as a rainbow is to the raindrops which create the illusion of a rainbow during a sunny shower, i.e. as appearance stands in relation to reality, so the raindrops are to the ‘things in themselves’. “Not only are the raindrops mere appearances, but even their circular form, nay, even the space in which they fall, are nothing in themselves but mere modifications or fundamental dispositions of our sensuous perception; the transcendental object [i.e. the thing in itself], however, remains unknown to us” (B62-3)." My emphasis.

 

But the analogy is a poor one. Prichard says (p.97) that we can only distinguish something as the thing in itself from an appearance, “so long as we mean by the thing in itself what Kant normally means by it, viz. something which exists independently of perception and is not an appearance at all.” I.e., the relation between rainbow and raindrops is not analogous to that between raindrops and things in themselves, because ‘thing in itself’ signifies something absolute and not relative, namely what the scholastics called a per se being, a thing that exists independently of any other thing, and particularly of any sentient thing. If a raindrop really is a per se being, then it exists independently of any other such being, so cannot be an appearance of something. If on the other hand it is not a per se being, then the analogy collapses: we cannot say that just as a rainbow stands to raindrops, so raindrops stand to raindrops-in-themselves.

 

Kant’s argument thus depends on a sleight of hand. “He reaches it by a transition which at first sight seems harmless … while he states the problem in the form ‘Are things in themselves spatial or are they only spatial as appearing to us?’ he usually states the conclusion in the form ‘Space is the form of phenomena’, i. e. phenomena are spatial. A transition is thereby implied from ‘things as appearing’ to ‘appearances’” (pp. 73-4).

 

Underlying the mistake, says Prichard, is the identification of perception with judgement. Our apprehension of what things are is essentially a matter of thought or judgement, and not of perception. “We do not perceive but think a thing as it is”. For example, the proposition “the portion of the great circle joining two points on the surface of a sphere is the shortest way between them via the surface” expresses a judgment that is valid for everyone.

 

Kant, however, treats the judgement as a perception; for if we apply his general assertion to this instance, we find him saying that what we judge the portion of the great circle to be essentially belongs to the perception of it, and is valid for the sensuous faculty of every  human being, and that thereby it can be distinguished from what belongs to the same perception of a great circle accidentally, e. g. its apparent colour, which is valid only for a particular organization of this or that sense. In this way he correlates what the great circle really is, as well as what it looks, with perception, and so is able to speak of what it is for perception. But, in fact, what the great circle is, is correlated with thought, and not with perception; and if we raise Kant’s transcendental problem in reference not to perception but to thought, it cannot be solved in Kant’s agnostic manner. For it is a presupposition of thinking that things are in themselves [my emphasis] what we think them to be; and from the nature of the case a presupposition of thinking not only cannot be rightly questioned, but cannot be questioned at all.

 

Simply put, a proposition is true or false depending on whether it agrees with reality or not.

 

As I shall argue elsewhere, this ‘Anglospheric’ point by Prichard marks a turning point in the philosophy of perception, indeed in philosophy itself. For nearly 300 years, beginning with the discovery of Descartes and others that the process of vision begins with the retinal image, the focus of philosophy was on perception, i.e. images, and not on language. Indeed, it is hard to find any informed linguistic analysis in the writing of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Kant and other. Church regarded Hegel’s Logic as marking the very lowest point of the history of logic. In the twentieth century Anglosphere, by contrast, the philosophy of perception is marked by a ‘linguistic turn’ to focus on language and philosophical logic. But that is a separate issue, as is the question of why philosophy on the Continent, much or all of it in the tradition that originates with Brentano and Husserl, took such a different turn.