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Knowledge as a Relation and Knowledge as an Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ermanno Bencivenga
Ermanno Bencivenga*
Affiliation:
University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA 92717
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Extract

Kant was very proud of his Copernican revolution. So it is a bit ironical that the exact nature of this revolution should have turned out to be as obscure and controversial as it has. In the present paper I will try to provide a new way of looking at the issue. It is my hope that this new perspective will prove not only historically but also theoretically valuable; in particular, that it will present Kant's revolution as one that we might want to take seriously, and maybe even think we still need.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 593 - 615
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1985

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Footnotes

*

I thank Kent Baldner, Gordon Brittan, and the referees of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

References

1 As Allison, Henry points out in his Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1983), 28,Google Scholar there are two main problems with the ‘Copernican revolution.’ One is the problem of understanding what revolution it is, the other is the problem of understanding what is Copernican about it. Here I am interested in the first problem (as is Allison).

2 For example, I think that in the naive conception knowledge is also a tool , and a very useful one to get around in the world. But here I won't discuss this pragmatic dimension.

3 In this paper, I use ‘experience’ in an informal, colloquial sense, not in the technical Kantian sense of ‘empirical knowledge.’

4 Such a specification is not essential here. But a natural way to begin to work toward it is the following: an experience e2 contradicts an experience e1 if a judgment made on the basis of e2 contradicts a judgment made on the basis of e1.

Note also that I am not in any way suggesting that these features of the experience of knowledge be all in some sense ‘internal’ to the experience, that is, that one experiences them while having a cognitive experience. In fact, I may never have a belief that I believe to be incorrigible, and this is perfectly compatible with the conjunction of the following: that I in fact do have cognitive experiences, and that I conceive of knowledge as incorrigible.

5 In the objectual construal characterized below (and adopted in this paper), I can of course know an experience e1 of mine, but then one usually thinks that the experience e2 of knowing e1 is distinct from e1.

6 In fact, Rolf George has recently claimed that ‘reference’ may be a better translation than ‘knowledge’ for Kant's ‘Erkenntnis'. See his ‘Kant's Sensationism,’ Synthese , 47 (1981) 241.

Other authors find it more appropriate to use the word ‘cognition’ to translate ‘Erkenntnis,’ and this translation certainly fits both Kant's definition of Erkenntnis and grammar better than ‘knowledge’ does. For on the one hand, as the O.E.D. tells us, a cognition is (among other things) ‘a product of the action of knowing,’ and that could very well be a (conscious) representation of an object (which is what Kant says an Erkenntnis is, at A320 B376). On the other, the translation ‘knowledge’ leaves us with no really good options for translating Kant's plural form ‘Erkenntnisse.’ However, in this paper I will stick to using ‘knowledge,’ for the following reasons. First, I am not concerned here with technical issues of translation; in particular, none of the points I will make depends on the translation of ‘Erkenntnisse.’ Second, there is after all a strict connection between ‘cognition’ and ‘knowledge,’ since ‘cognition’ is usually defined in terms of ‘knowledge’ (or ‘knowing,’ as in the above quote from the O.E.D.), so whatever problems Kant may have concerning cognition(s) admit of an immediate reformulation in terms of ‘knowledge.’ And finally, ‘knowledge’ is (but ‘cognition’ is not) central to our philosophical language (and conceptual framework). so it is a better choice if our main purpose is that of emphasizing the contemporary relevance of Kant's problems.

7 In general, the knowledge relation is also taken to involve something else, that is, (at least) the awareness of some justification for the adequacy of the mirroring. But I can leave such further issues aside here.

8 I am not concerned here with the extent to which Hume himself was aware of this generalization of his objection. But I find it interesting to point out that his identification of perceptions and objects (for which see for example A Treatise of Human Nature , [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978]. 202) seems to be a natural consequence of the generalization in question. For if no experience ever reaches an object distinct from the experience itself, and if one still wants to think of the experience as establishing a relation, then it is natural to think of the relation as a relation to the experience itself.

9 A Treatise of Human Nature , 225

10 Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975), 55

11 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics , (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill 1950), 8

12 Ibid., 6

13 The expression is W.V.O. Quine's, as are many of the ideas that follow about the logic of ‘looking for’ and ‘wanting.’ See his ‘Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes,’ in The Ways of Paradox (New York,NY: Random House 1966). 183-94.

14 The word ‘intermediate’ is used in this sense by David Kaplan. See his ‘Quantifying In,’ in Words and Objections: Essays on the Work of W. V. Quine , edited by D. Davidson and J. Hintikka (Dordrecht: Reidel1969). 178-214.

15 ‘Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes’, 183

16 Passages like this one have suggested to a number of authors reflections similar to mine. Melnick, Arthur for example, in his Kant's Analogies of Experience (Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press 1973),Google Scholar says that’ … there is to be found in the Transcendental Deduction an analysis of the notion of an object (as essentially an epistemic notion) that in itself suffices to establish the point that an ontology cannot be a feature of the world itself, but must bring in reference to how a subject's experience is connected to his judgmental apparatus,’ (143-4) and that ‘involved in the very concept of substance is that it is a way of organizing our experience.’ (139) But I think that, to the extent to which Melnick and I are saying analogous things, my terminology makes things a little clearer, and in any case the role played by the concept of an object in organizing our experience is for me only part of what Kant wants to talk about. The other (and, I think, more important) part I discuss in the next section.

17 Essentially the same point made in this last quote is made in the following passage, too:

If we enquire what new character relation to an object confers upon our representations, what dignity they thereby acquire, we find that it results only in subjecting the representations to a rule, and so in necessitating us to connect them in some one specific manner; and conversely, that only in so far as our representations are necessitated in a certain order as regards their time-relations do they acquire objective meaning. (A197 B242-3)

18 Think for example of how Kant uses the word ‘metaphysics.’ Sometimes (as in B395 footnote) the word refers to traditional metaphysics, which is proved to be impossible (at least as a science), and sometimes (as in Axx) it refers to transcendental philosophy, which of course Kant thinks is possible and is (going to become) a science.

19 To simplify the exposition, in this paper I am leaving aside the role that sensibility plays within the Kantian construal of knowledge. But note that a careful unpacking of the notion of connectedness mentioned here would have to characterize it as connectedness with some perception , as specified in the Second Postulate of Empirical Thought (A218 B266, A225 B272).

20 It may be useful to point out explicitly that I have no suggestion to offer here (and, I think, Kant has none in the Critique) as to how one is supposed to decide in concrete cases on the truth of statements like (15). This is an empirical question. What I am concerned with is the way we conceptualize the truth of such statements.

21 See his ‘Things in Themselves and Appearances: Intentionality and Reality in Kant,’ Archiv fÜr Geschichte der Philosophie 61 (1979), 293-308; ‘Intentional Objects and Kantian Appearances,’ Philosophical Topics 12 (1981), 9-37, and Representational Mind , (Bloomington, Indiana University Press 1983).

22 ‘Things in Themselves … ,’ 302. A number of similar statements can be found elsewhere in Aquila's work.

23 That is, maybe all that we can do is to critically remind ourselves of the necessity of the conceptual shift, without ever being able to see things the new way. This is what Kant seems to suggest when he talks about the ‘natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason’ (A298 B354), and claims that transcendental illusion

… can no more be prevented than we can prevent the sea appearing higher at the horizon than at the shore … ;or … than the astronomer can prevent the moon from appearing larger at its rising …. (A297 B354)

24 The reader may wonder what happens of things in themselves in this new perspective. Simply put, after the revolution a thing in itself becomes the (nonactual) object of an idea. I have explored this issue in some detail in my ‘Identity, Appearances, and Things in Themselves,’ Dialogue 23 (1984), 421-37.

25 A similar misperception is involved, I think, in Robert Howell's work. In his ‘Kant's First-Critique Theory of the Transcendental Object,’ Dialectica 35 (1981), 85-125, he correctly identifies Kant's concern as that of achieving de re knowledge via de dicto thought. But then he looks at this operation from what Kant would call the standpoint of transcendental realism; that is, in the terms I am using here, he looks at the operation in question as the (attempted) achievement of de re knowledge of an object in the sense of the old conceptual framework. When things are looked at that way, it is inevitable to conclude (as he does) that ‘Kant does face a serious problem, which may well be insoluble within his own terms, of how to reconcile the de dicto character of the transcendental-object theory with the fact that human beings do have de re knowledge of single, individuated outer objects … .’ (110) What Howell fails to appreciate, in my opinion, is the fact that Kant is redefining the notion of what it is to be de re, and that under the new definition he really has no such serious problem at all.

26 Hildesheim, Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung 1963

27 Ak. XXVIII,24

28 The statement is Guyer's, Paul in his paper ‘Kant's Intentions in the Refutation of Idealism,’ The Philosophical Review 92 (1983), 329–83. See 331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 That Kant himself was somewhat aware of the limitations of his language is indicated by his pointing out that there are some key ambiguities in it. For example, he thinks that there is an ambiguity concerning the expression ‘outside us’ (and hence, I might add, the expression ‘in us,’ too, which figures prominently in the passages quoted above from the Refutations of Idealism).

The expression ‘outside us’ is thus unavoidably ambiguous in meaning, sometimes signifying what as thing in itself exists apart from us, and sometimes what belongs only to outer appearance. (A373)

Note also that I would offer a similar explanation for the cases in which Kant seems to fall into the opposite extreme. Take for example the following passage from Reflexionen 6323 (quoted by Guyer, ‘Kant's Intentions … ,’ 342):

… the actuality of this determination of [our] existence, [requires] an immediate consciousness of something outside me, which corresponds to these representations (and which does not exist merely in my representation (rather (as thing) in itself) …

Again, I take it that in passages like this Kant is trying to make clear the objectual character of appearances, by contrasting them with representations, and once more feeling the need of something like the notion of an intentional object I am using.

30 ‘Kant's Intentions .. .’

31 In my ‘An Epistemic Theory of Reference,’ The Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), 785-805, I face the same problem of expression, not in a context of history of philosophy, but in the course of discussing contemporary issues in the philosophy of language.