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5. EVALUATION
My evaluation of Kant's approach will proceed as follows. We shall first see whether the doctrine of unknowability is tenable within Kant's context. Consequently, is Kant able to do away with all the possibility of metaphysics? If not, then in the second point we shall see whether Kant's assumption, the Copernican Revolution, needs any further modification. Can it yield another insight different from that of Kant?
5.1 Criticism of the Tenability of the Doctrine of Unknowability
It seems that Kant wishes to remain in an agnostic position. For he believes that we can neither assert nor deny the existence of any object in the Noumenal world and a fortiori, cannot speak of the knowledge of its nature or essence.
However Kant does not seem to me consistent in remaining in such an agnostic position. For, concerning the problems of the transcendental self and the transcendental object, Kant has not been able to give a satisfactory account. Furthermore, his "Refutation of Idealism" confirms my belief that Kant cannot help but retain the existence of the thing-in-itself.
5.l.l The Paradox of the Transcendental Self and Transcendental Object
In the Transcendental Analytic, Kant claims that the sense-manifold of the intuition is to be subsumed under the a priori categories provided by the understanding through the schemata of imagination; and that only the schematized categories can yield knowledge.
However the relation between sensation and intellection presupposes a principle of unification which is the unity of the Consciousness-in-general: the Ultimate a priori ground for the sense-manifold being synthesized and brought into an intelligible unity under the categories of understanding. Kant puts it this way:
"It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations" (B131).
Thus the "I think" constitutes the "Transcendental unity of Apperception" to which Kant attributes the framework of objectivity and the possibility of experience in general (cf. Bl32). Now the subject of the unity must be capable of self-consciousness so that the knowing subject can be aware of his own unity between the perceiving and thinking subject. In other words, the self-consciousness enables the subject to be aware of the fact that the self is the source of the unity. Hence on the occasion of experience, the existence of a transcendental ego reveals itself to the subject. As a pure and original unity, the self, in some way precedes experience precisely because it is the a priori condition for the possibility of experience. In this way the "Self" cannot be referred to an empirical self. For the empirical self is only what is known in appearance, it cannot be the bearer of the appearance(10). Kant, then, admits the existence of the transcendental self, at least implicitly. For he puts it this way:
"Certainly, the representation 'I am', which expresses the consciousness that can accompany all thought, immediately includes in itself the existence of a subject" (B277).
On the other hand Kant is aware that such addmittance would be an illicit inference. Hence in B422 he warns us not to mistake the subject as if it were an object of thought under its process of caterigorization. He wants, therefore, to maintain that its existence cannot be asserted for such an assertion would involve the categorization of the understanding. Kant's position seems to be this: one thing is that we have to think of the transcendental self as existing; another is that we do not know whether this ought-to-think-it-as-existing entails its objective existence.
This position is agnostic on one hand but paradoxical on another. I do not know how it is possible that Kant, on the one hand, asserts transcendentally that the "possibility of the experience" Is grounded in the transcendental unity of apperception while, on the other hand, holding that existence of the transcendental self that constitutes the transcendental unity of apperception is entirely unknown. For me it is, at least, co-known or co-affirmed though in an unthematical way. We shall dwell on this point later.
As we have observed in connection with B277, Kant's early doctrine of the transcendental object has developed in somewhat a close parallelism with that of the transcendental unity of apperception(11). The concept of transcendental object is used to account for the diversity of sensations and for the objects of representations. By this, Kant means that the thing-in-itself is the object which appears to us but it never appears to us as it is in itself. Its appearance has already been re-organized by the a priori elements of our cognitive faculties. The existence of the thing-in-itself seems to be inevitable, but Kant wants to remain agnostic, again, about this transcendental object, for the same reason as that mentioned above. Hence he runs into the same inconsistency as with the transcendental self(12).
There is another similar reason to explain why Kant cannot remain consistent in his agnostic position. The first Critique (as well as the doctrine of unknowability)is intended to set a limit to the validity of human knowledge. Within the area of this limit, namely, within the phenomena, our knowledge, such as that of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, is proved to be valid and reliable, whereas beyond this limit we, in principle, cannot claim any knowledge. However one cannot draw such a limit, unless one presumably knows (a priori) that there exists something noumenal which is beyond the limit. On the other hand, if we claim to know that there exists a noumenal world, the thing-in-itself, the knowledge of this claim will no longer be valid because this claim is mediated by our a priori catergories.
Kant, says P. F. Strawson, "seeks to draw the bounds of sense from a point outside them, a point which, if they are rightly drawn, cannot exist"(13). Indeed, F. H. Jacobi, the contemporary of Kant, has well remarked that without the idea of the thing-in-itself, we cannot enter the world of the Critique of Pure Reason, but with it neither can we remain inside(14).
5.1.2 Kant's Refutation of Idealism
Kant's refutation of Idealism provides further evidence to confirm my belief that Kant cannot remain agnostic but is, at heart, a realist who asserts the existence of the thing-in-itself. He puts the argument this way:
"I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time. All determination of time presupposes something permanent in perceptionˇKThus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me; and consequently the determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of actual things which I perceive outside meˇKIn other words, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me" (B276).
There is a great dispute among the commentators whether Kant is here referring the existence of the actual things outside oneself to the thing-in-itself, even though in his introduction (cf. Bxxxix and the note) Kant has explicitly maintained that the independent existence of the object is to be understood in the empirical sense(15). I also doubt whether this argument in such an emphatic form does not constitute a Transcendental Realism. For, if the consciousness of my existence is referred to the transcendental ego which reveals itself to the subject on the occasion of experience, the object of experience must be in some way the non-ego of the non-empirical reality. Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that the non-ego, the object of experience, is, after all, a mere construction of the mind. But does Kant possibly mean this? Definitely not! He certainly thought it absurd to reduce all reality to mere mental construction of the subject, else he would have been no better than Berkeley whose idealism maintains that only the mind and what the mind perceives exist. Therefore, Kant has to look on the retention of the existence of the thing-in-itself as a matter of common sense. Besides, if the thing-in-itself is totally eliminated, the phenomena would be identified with the thing-in-itself; and consequently Kant's philosophy would, at once, have become full-blown metaphysical system.
Granted that he has retained the thing-in-itself, does it follow that his rejection of metaphysics is automatically self-invalidated? Not necessarily, although the strength of his rejection is now much reduced. For, at least, it is, in principle, possible for man to know the existence of the thing-in-itself.
However the Copernican Hypothesis can still enable Kant to remain subjectivistic regarding the nature or essence of the thing-in-itself. He can still possibly deny that the human mind can ever penetrate into the essence of the natural things themselves. Now it is time to discuss his assumptions.
5.2 Criticism of the Copernican Revolution
I think I have explained earlier why Kant opts for this assumption, hence I do not want to repeat myself here. What I wish to point out here Is that Copernicus' doctrine of motion (cf. Bxxii), taken in itself as a scientific theory, does not confirm Kant's philosophical conclusion.
Copernicus explained that the observation of motions of the heavenly bodies must be in view of the motion of the observer on earth. This actually is derived from the Aristotelian principle of relative motion. For Copernicus holds that if the observed objects are moving in the same direction with equal velocity, no motion can be observed. If any movement is ascribed to the earth, that notion will generate appearance of itself In all things which are external to it, though as occurring in the opposite direction, as if everything were passing across the earth.(16)
Now Kant employs the same analogy in his theory of knowledge that the apparent characteristic of reality is due to the mind of the knower(17). If the knowledge of objects is due to the structure of the cognitive faculty, then the mind can never penetrate into reality beyond its appearances. Consequently no transcendent metaphysics is possible.
I think the key-point is that our observation of the external world, at least insofar as motion is concerned, is always relative to the situation of the observer. The relativity can be further confirmed by Einstein's theory about the simultaneity of time. According to him, when events happen at different places, they can be called simultaneous only in a relative sense. For it is empirically possible that according to one observer event A happens before event B; according to another, B may precede A; whereas a third observer may call them simultaneous., There seems, therefore, to be no universal "before" and "after" in time, insofar as observers are concerned. Hence observations, as far as motion and time are concerned, are always relative to the observers.
However does this consequently confirm Kant's belief that knowledge consists in the conformity of objects to the situation (mental forms) of the knower? Does it follow that we can observe objects in space and time owing to our a priori forms of sensibility with which we spatialize and temporalize the sense-manifold? Does it further entail that it is our mind that imposes the principle of causality on the phenomenal world rather than penetrates into the real nature of the world by abstraction? I do not think that it is necessarily so.
The presence of this relativity does not entail the non-penetrability of things in themselves by the mind, and the awareness of the relativity just presupposes the contrary. The very possibility of detecting the relativity and subjectivity of our sense-perception reveals to us that we are some way given an absolute datum in our experience against which we can pinpoint the fact of relativity. The consciousness of this absolute datum vindicates the penetrability of the thing-in-itself by the mind. To what extent? I do not know, but it is, in principle, possible.
Of course such a remark would not by itself necessitate an abandonment of the general standpoint represented by Kant's theory of experience because his new conformity-theory of knowledge may serve him as an absolute datum, a point of departure, which taken as vindication does not require any demonstrated proof and consequently be rationally defensible.
Besides, Kant's Copernican Revolution is an initial asumption designed to explain the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments on the supposition that they could not be explained otherwise. However to postulate the assumption in this way is not uncontroversial. For example, it is still relevant to ask if there is in fact any synthetic a priori knowledge. Secondly, if we agree that there is, we can still ask whether its possibility cannot be explained in ways other than Kant's.
The above remark indicates there is a certain amount of arbitrariness, if not bias, in Kant's initial option with which he has already undermined a priori the possibility of transcendent metaphysics at the very outset. I doubt whether this is the best option, if there is any, to settle the dispute among the metaphysicians.
Two important remarks can be made here. First, with his epistemology Kant has not succeeded in remaining consistently in the agnostic position. I am inclined to think that he, at heart, belongs to Transcendental Realism which, at least in principle, concedes a sort of immediate, intuitive or unthematic co-knowledge of the objective existence of thing-in-itself. This arouses a certain hope for the revival of metaphysics. Secondly, granted that Kant has full right to opt for his initial assumption (Copernican Revolution) and the transcendental method, he can arrive at the awareness of relativity which, indeed, tames every wild dogmaticism. However he cannot ignore that this awareness precisely presupposes something absolute concomitantly given there in the cognitive experience.
Now I would like to dwell on, at some length, this absolute datum to see if it can bridge the chasm between the thing-in-itself and the so-called "mental contents" of the knower, and to see if it can furnish a new insight for an alternative approach to the possibility of metaphysics.
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