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Kant's Account of Sensation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Lorne Falkenstein
Lorne Falkenstein*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario, London, ON, CanadaN6A 3K7
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Extract

Kant defined ‘sensation’ (Empfindung) as ‘the effect of an object on the representative capacity, so far as we are affected by it.’ This is, to put it mildly, not one among his more elegant, clear or helpful sayings. And it is merely an instance of a more general malaise. Kant did not say as much about sensation as he should have, and his account-or lack of it-can be seen at the root of many of the difficulties that have plagued his readers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 63 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1990

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References

1 A19-B34. References to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason are to the pagination of the first and second original editions (Riga: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch 1781 and 1787), cited as ‘A’ and ‘B’ respectively. References to Kant's other works are to the pagination of the Prussian Academy edition of his collected writings (Berlin: de Gruyter 1968), cited as ‘Ak’ with volume in roman and page in arabic numerals. All translations are my own.

2 The former questions, on the causes of sensations, will not be dealt with here. Fortunately, when an effect is given it is possible to learn a great deal about it without first having to determine the nature of its cause, and the position I will take on the nature of sensations will not presuppose any particular position on their causes.

3 It has also made what may be considered to be two controversial claims: that intuition is the initial reception of as yet undetermined data, and that space and time are orders or manners of arrangement in which these data are presented. I do not mean to rule out alternative readings of ‘intuition’ and ‘form,’ and these readings will be introduced below wherever they might have an effect on the outcome of the argument. My aim is merely to avoid unnecessary initial complications.

4 This is the view, for instance, of Kemp Smith's ‘phenomenalist’ Kant as distinguished from his ‘subjectivist’ Kant. See Kemp Smith, Norman A Commentary to Kant's ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (London: Macmillan 1923), 270-84.Google Scholar

5 For a specimen of this approach see Aquila, Richard E. Representational Mind (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1983), 33–146.Google Scholar

6 See Allison, Henry E. Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1983), 3–34; 237-54.Google Scholar

7 There are various ways this might be done. See the work cited in notes 4-6 above for three possibilities.

8 Among English commentators it has been held, for instance, by the most recognized figures of the previous two generations, Norman Kemp Smith and Peter Fredrick Strawson. (See Smith, Kemp 270-84, and Strawson, The Bounds of Sense [London: Methuen 1966], 91Google Scholar.)

9 This is an assertion which has become questionable in the light of relativity theory, and some of the literature on the problem of location does in fact invoke the notion that time is not at all distinct from space as a way around the problem. See, for instance, Russell's treatment of the issue in The Analysis of Matter (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1927), 384. For more recent discussion see Weingrad, Brad ‘Relativity and the Spatiality of Mental Events,’ Philosophical Studies 32 (1977) 279-84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cox, John Grey ‘Must Mental Events have a Spatial Location?,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 63 (1982) 270-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I do not feel that this is a particularly helpful tack to take when dealing with philosophers who deny the existence of things in space outside of the mind-or are supposed to have done so by some of their important commentators.

10 See Prichard, H.A. Kant's Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1909), 75-6Google Scholar; Wilkerson, T.E. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976), 26Google Scholar.

11 This point has recently been persuasively argued by Aquila, ‘Is Sensation the Matter of Appearance?’ in Gram, Moltke S. ed., Interpreting Kant (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press 1982), 11–19Google Scholar. I have drawn on Aquila's argument in the paragraphs that follow, but the reader is referred to his paper for a more detailed treatment of the issue.

12 See section IV, 5 below.

13 Objekt Überhaupt. I have attepted to preserve a distinction between Kant's usage of ‘Ojbekt’ and ‘Gegenstand’ in translation by rendering ‘Objekt’ with upper-case ‘O.’ For more on this distinction see Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience, vol. 1 (London: Allen and Unwin 1936), 193 n. 1Google Scholar, and Wolfgang Schwarz's discussion in the Glossary of his translation of the Critique (Aalen, Germany: Scientia Verlag 1982), 268.

14 By recognizing this distinction I do not mean to take a position on the difficult question of affection in Kant. The ‘objects of perception’ which we postulate as influencing our sensory states still have a problematic status. They might be entities which we infer as logical consequences of our beliefs about empirical and causal laws, and hence merely higher-order phenomenal objects thought as causes. They might be things in themselves which appear through our sensory experience and thus are given to us in conformity with certain epistemic conditions. Or they might be things as they really are in themselves to which Kant mistakenly denies us epistemic access. For more on these possibilities see Bennett, Jonathan Kant's Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1966)Google Scholar; Allison; and Guyer, Paul Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar respectively. A significant variant on the second, ‘double aspect’ position is to be found in Gram, The Transcendental Turn (Gainesville, FL: University Presses of Florida 1984), esp. 33-5Google Scholar. While my sympathies lie with the double aspect theory nothing in the texts I have cited so far proves that, and nothing I will go on to say depends on that reading.

15 For a complete discussion of this issue see Vaihinger, Hans Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, vol. II (Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft 1892), 180-4Google Scholar.

16 ‘Kant's Sensationism,’ Synthese 47 (1981) 240-1

17 Representational Mind, 68, my italics. Aquila's position has been further developed in his latest book, Matter in Mind (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1989), esp. 6-12.

18 The argument of this section borrows heavily from Hans Siegfried, ‘Kant's “Spanish Bank Account“: Realität and Wirklichkeit,’ in Gram, Interpreting Kant (115-32).

19 That this is indeed Kant's position on ‘the real’ is indicated by his listing ‘Realität'from which ‘das Reale’ comes-as the highest category of quality on the table of categories and his distinguishing it from the modal category of ‘Wirklichkeit’ or actual existence. Perhaps the most striking indication of his participation in the traditional conception of ‘real,’ however, comes from his discussion of the ‘ens realissimum’ in the Dialectic (A571-83-B599-611).

20 Again, let us just concentrate on the claim that sensations, as effects, are states of the subject and leave aside the problematic reference to the affecting object.

21 Nor, for that matter, could it be how he deals with the intensity of sensory quality.

22 The research project, of which this paper is a product, was funded by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant #456-87-0191. I have benefitted from comments provided by Ralf Meerbote, Robert Butts, and the referees and editors of The Canadian Journal of Philosophy.