Maimon states the problem of objective validity of concepts in the following words:
“Our thinking essence (whatever it may be) feels itself to be
a citizen in an intelligible world, and although this intelligible world is not
an object of its cognition (nor indeed is this thinking essence itself),
nevertheless sensible objects indicate intelligible objects to it. The
existence of ideas in the mind necessarily indicates some kind of use for them,
and since this is not to be found in the sensible world, we must look for it in
an intelligible world where the understanding, by means of the forms
themselves, determines the objects that these ideas refer to. As a result, our
thinking essence can never be satisfied with sensible objects and its way of
thinking them, as the Ecclesiast says the soul is never full (satisfied). So it
recognizes itself as, on the one side, restricted to the sensible world, but on
the other side, it feels in itself an irresistible drive to extend these limits ever further and to discover a passage
from the sensible to the intelligible world.” (Essays: 175-176)
Hume
believed that if we see two things always accompanied together and when we do
not know the reason why they must always be found together our mind supplies
the reason and forges a necessary and universal connection between the two. If
we examine the reasons for our belief in a necessary and universal connection
between the two we find nothing but simple animal behaviour to expect one thing
when we see another and this habit masquerades as insight into the essence of
the objects and so we believe that human beings have a rationality that is
different in kind from the one found within animals. The belief that there is
an intelligible world over and above the sensible world is then an illusion and
its origins can be traced back to the way our mind works. Hume’s major
contention is that natural belief in the existence of something, that
distinguishes fact from fiction from us is not something cognitive but
non-cognitive. It is a feeling that when strong makes us believe that what is present
within consciousness is real. There is no difference between one perception and
another intrinsically that allows us to classify one as an idea and another as
an impression, the difference lies in the feeling or the force of liveliness
with which one perception is associated with another and which gets classified
as impression and then invested with an epistemological primacy, lost to some
extent in passing over from one perception to another thereby suggesting that
the idea depends on or is caused by an impression. The rational arises from the
irrational. But Kant was firmly convinced that there is an intelligible world
and cognition was the result of the combination of the sensible with the
intelligible. All he had to do was to give a criteria for demarcation between
the intelligible (necessity and universality) and sensible (contingent) and
show that experience (synthetic a-priori) depends on a combination of the two
via a synthesis based on the transcendental unity of consciousness. The
strategy worked because one thing that Hume could not explain was the unity of
consciousness and so if it can be shown that experience presupposes this unity
of consciousness then the reality of the intelligible world could be proved and
restricted to the limits of the sensible world because without synthesis the
pure concepts of understanding could not provide any cognition solely by
themselves. This neat strategy however had a problem. By showing that the laws
of thought are valid since they are presupposed by experience or that they make
experience possible, Kant only proved their objective validity pertaining to
the form of experience and not the reality of the experience itself. It is true
that I am constrained to think the object of experience in a certain way but
that does not prove that the form of the thought has been proved valid for the
content of the thought or the object of experience. To state this problem more
precisely we need to look at the following passage from Maimon’s Essays:
“So when Kant divides
this principle question into its subordinate parts and asks, for example, 'how
are synthetic a priori propositions in mathematics possible?' then his meaning
is merely, 'how do they attain existence in our cognition?' to which the
answer: 'through an a priori construction (from the cognitive faculty itself)'
is completely satisfactory. For me, on the other hand, this question has the
following meaning: their construction certainly convinces us entirely both of
the existence of mathematical synthetic a priori propositions and of the nature
of this existence, but the question is: 'How are we to comprehend this
existence in us a priori (from a preceding cognition)?' For example, the
concept of an equilateral triangle does not exist merely in the actual
construction (in so far as we construct a triangle in general, and think in
addition the possibility of the equality of the sides); rather, as Euclid (Prop
I) teaches us, we are already convinced of its reality before its actual
construction, and it is by means of this that its construction is not only
accomplished but is even comprehensible. In the same way, every analytic
proposition is already comprehensible from discursive cognition prior to the
construction of the concept. By contrast, the truth of mathematical axioms is
imposed on us, without being in any way made comprehensible, and this comprises
the formal incompleteness of our cognition with respect to them. But our
cognition also possesses an inescapable material incompleteness, namely when
the construction cannot fully comply with the conditions of the concept
(because the concept stretches to infinity). This gives rise to an antinomy: on
the one hand, reason commands us to attribute reality to the concept only in so
far as it is constructible because the reality of what is not constructible is
merely problematic. But on the other hand, reason demands that the proposition
should hold only for the complete concept as it is thought in the
understanding, and not for the incomplete concept as it is constructed by the
imagination!” (Essays: 241)
Maimon
says that Kant has proved the existence of synthetic a-priori propositions but
what he has not shown is how to comprehend or explain this knowledge that we
simply find present within us. A line is defined as the shortest distance
between two points, we could never arrive at this definition by analysing the
concept of a line without the aid of experience. This observation allows Kant
to argue that dogmatic philosophy is formal and lacks reality that can be
supplied only in intuition. To arrive at this result Kant shows that experience
presupposes two distinct sources of cognition – the form or the rule for
thinking an object of experience comes from understanding and actual material
content from the senses. The latter cannot be analytically reduced to the
former. Against empiricists like Hume Kant argued that form or the rules of
understanding cannot be supplied from matter of cognition because the latter is
the source of contingent truths and not universal and necessary truth. The
problem is now to show how the opposition of form and matter is to be overcome
in order to make experience possible. Kant believes that by relating the pure
concepts of understanding to intuition via a schema produced by imagination, he
has proved the objective validity of these concepts. Maimon argues that it does
not because reason demands that reality must be attributed only to complete
concepts in the understanding rather than incomplete concepts brought about by
imagination. According to Maimon we are aware that we are in possession of a
rule through which we can construct objects in intuition i.e. we are aware of
the existence of synthetic a-priori judgements but he insists that this
existence must be comprehended a-priori or in other words we need to know that
understanding has brought about this object in intuition in accordance with a
rule of understanding. What Kant has proved against Hume is the possibility
that we can apply the concept of causality – a-priori rule of understanding to
say fire and smoke because this rule has applicability to objects of intuition
in general. But this leaves open a gap because the relation of fire and smoke
has not been comprehended a-priori i.e. we do not know whether this combination
has not been seen as generated or brought about by a rule of understanding or
not because particular objects of experience do not possess any distinguishing
marks of reason. Kant has not excluded the possibility that habitual
association is the reason why we combine fire and smoke within our
consciousness and in absence of a sufficient reason to ground a combination or
judgement we cannot eliminate the possibility and a corresponding doubt of
there being a non-rational ground of judgement. Transcendental Apperception is
of no help here because it is a formal principle that shows that we have
a-priori rules that can be brought to intuition but that is not the same as
proving that these rules are also the rules that have brought about this object
of intuition. What Kant can insist against Hume is that the combination of fire
and smoke must be subsumed under the concept of causality in order to bring
about the formal unity of consciousness, in order to see the combination as
rule governed and hence as a necessary sequence of events. But what he cannot
insist against Hume is that this combination of fire and smoke actually depends
on a rule of understanding because a possible genetic explanation of the
combination involving non-cognitive factors cannot be excluded. Since we do not
comprehend the combination in accordance with the rule of understanding, we
combine two events within our consciousness – we are aware of that but we are
not aware of the reason why we have combined these two events together. This
ignorance is the reason why we come to see something irrational as rational.
This was the heart of Hume’s case against reason, we never perceive any
rational connection between two events, we combine them unaware of the reason
why we do what we do and then transfer the credit to reason where the credit
was really due to a subjective feeling of expectancy:
“The
understanding prescribes a rule for the productive imagination to produce a space
enclosed by three lines the imagination obeys and constructs a triangle but
sees that at the same time three angles are forced on it, something the
understanding certainly did not ask for. At this point the understanding
becomes cunning: it learns to see into the previously unknown connection
between three sides and three angles, although its ground is still I unknown to
it. It thus makes a virtue out of a necessity, adopting an imperious manner and
saying: 'a triangle must have three angles', as if it were itself the law-giver
here, when in fact it has to obey a completely unknown law-giver.” (Essays:
247)
That
is the point – understanding illicitly assumes the role of law giver and in
order to prove quid juris it has to be shown that understanding is the law
giver which means that we cannot stay ignorant of the reason why we combine two
events like fire and smoke together, we need to comprehend the combination
a-priori as generated by understanding. To do this is to find the complete
concept or the complete definition of a concept that fulfils the demand of
reason to find the sufficient ground of something.
Kant
has failed to recognize an explanatory datum – the explanation of the
possibility of synthetic a-priori propositions. A concept can be brought to
intuition by constructing an object of intuition in accordance with a rule of
understanding which proves the reality of the concept. This would have sufficed
if what is thought in the concept could be completely brought within intuition
– sensory or pure. But Maimon argues that the pure concepts of understanding are
really like Ideas of Reason and so ‘the construction cannot fully comply with
the conditions of the concept (because the concept stretches to infinity)’
(Essays: 47) and hence he presents the problem in the form of an antinomy:
“So the thing in itself is an idea of reason
provided by reason itself to solve a universal antinomy of thought in general.
For thought in general comprises the relation of a form (rule of the
understanding) to a matter (the given subsumed under it). Without matter we
cannot achieve consciousness of the form so that matter is a necessary
condition of thought, i.e. really thinking a form or rule of the understanding
requires a given matter that it refers to; by contrast, what is required for
completeness in the thought of an object is that nothing in it should be given
and everything thought. We cannot reject either of these requirements as
illegitimate, so we must satisfy both by making our thought ever more complete,
a process in which matter approaches ever closer to form to infinity, and this
is the solution of the antinomy.” (Essays: 240)
1
There
are two explanatory demands, one to make a symbol intuitive which is necessary
to understand the meaning of a concept. When I see fire and smoke together a
number of times in an invariable temporal sequence I apply the concept of
causality and so subsume objects of intuition to rules of understanding. The
law allows me to distinguish temporal sequences that should be regarded as
cause and effect from those that do not but the distinguishing mark belongs to
understanding and not to the objects of intuition (Essays: 221-222). Just as
words are applied to objects despite the fact that no relation can be found
between say the word ‘fire’ and fire, similarly the concepts of understanding
acquire a significance through an object of intuition despite the fact that
there is nothing in common between the two. The concepts of understanding are
a-temporal while objects of intuition are within space and time, two distinct
spaces and two sequence of events in time lack any logical or conceptual
relation with each other. This is the lesson we gather from Transcendental
Aesthetic. Kant however argues that pure concepts of understanding are
applicable to objects of intuition in his transcendental deduction and this is
made possible through a schema of imagination. But granted that concepts can be
made intuitive this is still insufficient as a proof of objective validity of
pure concepts of understanding because it leaves open the possibility that the
intuition arises within us through some other means not determined by the laws
of understanding. The demand of Reason is towards completeness of cognition
i.e. the complete identity of concept or representation and the object. In the
case of laws of identity and contradiction we see that they possess universal
validity i.e. these laws are valid for all thinking beings. Kant has opened a
way to make symbols intuitive but he has not shown that this is the only way to
represent concepts within intuition for all thinking beings thereby falling
short of proving universal validity of pure concepts of understanding i.e.
there is no objective necessity that these concepts can be constructed in
intuition in the way shown or that the object of intuition necessarily can be
constructed only by following the rules of understanding. Objective or
universal validity can be attributed to only to those concepts that are valid
for every kind of rational beings like laws of identity and contradiction.
Concepts that can be made intuitive cannot be regarded as impossible but they
still fall short of being valid for all thinking beings.
The
problem is that objects given to us a-posteriori are sensible and bear no marks
of intelligibility unlike mathematical objects that are not given prior to
being thought and which bear the mark of belonging to understanding i.e. of
being a-priori. We see here the conflict arises because only a-priori objects
have the right to be regarded as being generated by reason while a-posteriori
or objects given to us lack any distinguishing mark of reason and hence reason
cannot be seen as having any right over them unless they are a-priori. In order
for reason to have jurisdiction over them the object and not just the form must
be generated within us a-priori (Essays: 221-222) and only when their existence
is comprehended a-priori can we eliminate the possibility that objects given to
us by senses are not amenable to reason. Also this allows the possibility that
synthetic propositions can be converted to analytic propositions and so serves
the interests of reason even if the ideal is unattainable. Maimon’s refutation
of Hume then is in a sense pragmatic, that it is useful to think that matter
and form of cognition can coincide and it serves the interests of reason to believe
so. We may fall short of a proof of objective validity but subjective validity
through induction can always be got closer to objective validity. Maimon is
ambivalent pertaining to the objective validity of the idea of infinite reason.
He does not solve the problem of quid juris but only shows that the problem can
be solved by assuming an infinite reason but that does not show that it is in
fact so solved (Essays: 100). An infinite reason must be assumed because it
furthers the interests of reason. Hence the idea of an infinite reason is only
hypothetically and not objectively valid.
The
gap between sensible and intelligible in Maimon’s philosophy cannot be overcome
unless it is possible for the former to be reduced to the latter but this
reduction can only be an ideal for a finite being. Maimon opens the pathway to
solving this antinomy and creating a route between sensible and intelligible by
positing the idea of infinite reason as a regulative ideal which is possible
only if intuition is a form of confused understanding thereby making it
possible to reduce matter given a-posteriori to forms of understanding. Pure
concepts of understanding cannot be applied directly to objects of experience
but only to the limits of objects of experience which are the fundamental elements
of material reality – intelligible objects like Leibniz’s monads - to which
they are can reduced and so they are ideas of reason where nothing is given and
everything is completely thought (Essays: 100-102, 221-22). Kant’s solution was
to show the convergence of sensible and intelligible via the idea of a
synthesis based on apperception to make experience possible. But the
convergence is open to doubt and lacks objective necessity because the objects
do not possess any distinguishing mark of reason and in Kant’s philosophy there
is no possibility to make them intelligible. (Essays: 221). The thing-in-itself
is retained within Kant’s philosophy as an acknowledgement that reality cannot
be completely intelligible and so thinking does remain formal even though
within experience there can be a convergence of sensible and intelligible
reality because of which even within the realm of appearances finite beings can
discriminate between truth and falsehood:
“The thesis of all genuine idealists, from the
Eleatic School up to Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: “All
cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and
there is truth only in the ideas of pure understanding and reason.” The principle
that governs and determines my idealism throughout is, on the contrary: “All
cognition of things out of mere pure understanding or pure reason is nothing
but sheer illusion, and there is truth only in experience.” ……From this it follows: that, since truth
rests upon universal and necessary laws as its criteria, for Berkeley
experience could have no criteria of truth, because its appearances (according
to him) had nothing underlying them a priori; from which it then followed
that experience is nothing but sheer illusion, whereas for us space and time
(in conjunction with the pure concepts of the understanding) prescribe a priori
their law to all possible experience, which law at the same time provides the
sure criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion in experience.” (Prolegomena: 125-126;
emphasis mine)
Kant, Immanuel. 1996 (1787). Critique of
Pure Reason. Translated by Werner Pluhar. United States of America. Hackett
Publishing Co.
Maimon, Solomon. 2010 (1790). Essays on
Transcendental Philosophy. Translated by Henry Somers-Hall, Nick Midgley,
Alistair Welchman and Merten Reglitz. United States of America. Continuum
Publishing Co.
Maimon, Solomon. 2000 (1794). Letters of
Philaletes to Aenesidemus. Translated by Georg Di Giovanni in Between Kant to
Hegel. 2nd Ed. Edited by H.S. Harris and Georg Di Giovanni. United
States of America. Hackett Publishing Co.
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