Space and Incongruence: The Origin of Kant’s Idealism

151 Pages·1981·4.803 MB·English

by  Jill Vance Buroker (auth.)

SPACE AND INCONGRUENCE
SYNTHESE HISTORICAL LIBRARY
TEXTS AND STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF
LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY
Editors:
N. KRETZMANN, CornellUniversity
G. NUCHELMANS, University ofLeyden
L. M. DE RIJK, University ofLeyden
EditorialBoard:
J. BERG, Munich InstituteofTechnology
F. DEL PUNTA, Linacre College,Oxford
D. P. HENRY, University ofManchester
J. HINTIKKA
B.MATES, University ofCalifornia,Berkeley
J. E. MURDOCH, HarvardUniversity
G. PATZIG, University ofGottingen
VOLUME 21
JILL VANCE BUROKER
SPACE AND
INCONGRUENCE
The OriginofKant's Idealism
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.Y.
LibraryofCongressCatalogingin Publication Data
Buroker.JillVance,1945
Spaceand incongruence.
[Synthcw historicallibrary : textsandstudiesinthehistoryof
logicand philosophy ;v,21)
Bibliography:p.
Includesindex.
I. Kanl,Immanuel,1724-1804. 2. Idealism. 3. Spal~and
time. 4. Lcibniz,Cottfncd Wilhelm,frciherrvon,1646-1716· Innuenl'C.
I. Title. II. Series.
B2799.142B87 110 80-5009
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1/ Absolute and Relational Theories ofSpace 7
CHAPTER 2/ Kant's LeibnizianHeritage 24
CHAPTER 3 / Incongruent Counterpartsand the Nature ofSpace 50
CHAPTER 4 / IncongruentCounterpartsand the Nature ofSensibility 69
CHAPTER 5 / IncongruentCounterpartsand ThingsinThemselves 92
CHAPTER 6 / Kant's Metaphysicsof Spaceand Motion 119
CONCLUSION / TheSignificanceof IncongruentCounterparts 132
BIBLIOGRAPHY 135
INDEX 139
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book grew out of my Ph.D. dissertation at the University ofChicago,
'The Development of Kant's Metaphysics of Nature', largely because of the
patient guidance of my advisorthere, WarnerA.Wick. Nelson Pikeand Guy
Sircello, my former colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, each
gave me unselfishly and cheerfully the benefit of his philosophical insight,
and encouraged me through the many revisionsrequired to clarify my argu
ments. I am equally indebted to Gordon Brittan forhispainstakingcriticism
of an early draft ofthe manuscript,and for his willingnessto read later ver
sions with the same care and attention. Without the aid of these gentlemen
this book would not havecomeinto being.
Others whosecomments andsuggestionsIfound helpful areHenryAllison,
Arthur Melnick,ManleyThompson, Kirk Wilsonand Eleutherius Winance.I
alsowishto thank the philosophydepartmentsat the UniversityofCalifornia,
Los Angeles, the Claremont Graduate School, the University of California,
San Diego,and Stanford University for givingmeopportunities to read parts
of the manuscript.
LongBeach, Ca. JILL VANCE BUROKER
1980
vii
INTRODUCTION
Kantian transcendental idealism is the thesis that fundamental aspects of
experience arecontributedby the perceivingsubject rather than by the things
experienced, and are not features of things as they exist independently of
sensible perceivers. This is undoubtedly the most striking and at the same
time the most puzzling of Kant's Criticalviews.Itisstrikingbecausenothing
could be lesscommonsensical than the beliefthat thingsasweperceivethem
have nothing in common with things as they areindependently ofbeingper
ceived. From a more technical point of viewthe doctrine ispuzzlingbecause
Kant apparently does not support it very well. Beginningwith Kant's con
temporaries, critics have pointed out that among all the arguments for the
theory in the CritiqueofPureReason,none entails the conclusion that things
in themselvescannot be like objects ofsense experience in any way. So,for
example, although transcendental idealism is compatible with Kant's theory
of synthetic a priori knowledge,there isnothing in the analysis of the syn
thetic a priori ruling out the possibility that features contributed to experi
ence by the perceivingsubject correspondto characteristics of thingsinthem
selves, although we might neverknow this to be so.And even though Kant
sees transcendental idealism as a solution to the Antinomies,this is at best
indirect supportfor the view;there areundoubtedlyotherwaysto get around
thesetraditionalmetaphysical puzzles.Moreover,Kant assertsthe merely sub
jective character ofsensiblerepresentationsin 1770,longbefore he developed
the theory of the Antinomies. Because the mere subjectivity of objects as
experienced is such a radical notion, it is incumbent on Kant to provide
especiallygood reasonssupportingit.
The purpose ofthis book isto explainin detail how Kant came to formu
late two Critical doctrines associated with transcendental idealism. One is
the viewdiscussed above, that objects ofsenseexperience cannotcorrespond
to or represent things in themselves.The second isthe theory ofideasat the
foundation of Kant's idealism, that the sensibility - the capacity to know
objects by means of the senses- is a mode ofknowledge distinct from the
intellect, neither to be explained in terms of the other. I believethat Kant
had good reasons for both views, reasons which can be recognized only if
the development of his Critical philosophy ischarted against the philosophy
2 INTRODUCTION
of Leibniz. In this book Ishallarguethat these two aspects ofKant'sidealism
were the logical outcome of his rejection ofcertain Leibnizian views.More
precisely, they developed from a series of arguments Kant made against
Leibniz, beginning with his criticism of Leibniz's relational theory of space
and ending with a refutation of Leibniz's theory ofknowledge. In short, I
believe that Kant's transcendental idealism makes sense only when seen as
arepudiationofthe Leibnizian analysisofsenseperception.
In a way this should not be so surprising. Most commentators recognize
that Kant waseducatedinthe Leibniziantradition,and, inhisearliestwritings,
attempted to reconcile that philosophywith the viewsofothergreat thinkers.
Kant himself tells us that the Critical philosophy developed out ofhis dis
satisfaction with Leibniz's rationalist metaphysics, aided by the scepticism
of David Hume. Moreover, the ways in which Kant's mature philosophy
diverges from Leibniz's system are readily summarized. Whereas Leibniz
thinks that all truths are analytic, Kant distinguishes analytic from synthetic
judgments and assignsmetaphysics the status ofsyntheticaprioriknowledge.
Whereas Leibniz thinks that the basic mode ofcognition is intellection and
explains sense perception as a faulty kind of thinking, Kant argues that
the sensibility and the understanding perform different functions, neither
reducible to the other. And finally, Leibniz views objects of sense percep
tion as phenomenal manifestations of metaphysical substances, although
they represent only incompletely these things in themselves. Kant, by con
trast, believes that we can know nothing about things as they exist indepen
dently of being perceived. Given that the relations between Kantian and
Leibnizian thought are well known in broad outline, it is only natural to
wonder why the connection between transcendental idealism and Leibnizian
idealismhas not beenrecognized before.I think there are two reasonsfor this.
The first and more general reason has to do with the mistaken beliefthat
the meaning of an idea can be separated from the intellectual context in
which it isarticulated.Ithasbecome common to try to evaluatephilosophical
positions without taking into account either the roots of the idea in the his
tory of philosophy or the way inwhich the position emergeswithin asystem
of thought. It is no wonder that,having ignored the historical dimensions of
an idea, critics often conclude that it isincomprehensible or without merit.
This is one reason why the most intriguing part of the Critical philosophy
has not been properly understood - not enough attention has been paid to
the relations between Kant's and Leibniz's philosophies. The other reason
has to do with the peculiar nature ofKant'sarguments leadingto hisCritical
theory ofsenseperception.
INTRODUCTION 3
The key to this theory isa seriesofargumentsappearinginwritings from
1768 to 1786. In each caseKant claimsthat the existence ofacertain kind of
physical object, which he callsan "incongruent counterpart",demonstrates
something about the nature ofspace. Counterparts are objects like left and
right hands which are mirror image reflections of one another. Kant calls
them incongruent because, in spite oftheir similarities, they cannot besuper
imposed on one another, that is, made identical to one another,by any con
tinuous motion in space.The first incongruent counterpartsargument occurs
in Kant's short essay of 1768, Concerning the Ultimate Foundation ofthe
Differentiation ofRegions in Space.In it Kant claims that the existence of
incongruent counterparts shows that "absolute spacehasitsown reality inde
pendent of the existence of all matter ...". [16,p.37] Ingeneral he argues
that left- and right-handed objects areevidence that the Newtonian theory of
absolute space is preferable to its competitor, the relational theory ofspace.
One puzzle is the connection between incongruent counterparts and the
absolute theory of space. The absolutists believed that space is an entity
which exists independently of the objects located in it. It is conceivable,
according to them, that space could exist even if no spatial objects ever ex
isted at all. Opposing this view were many thinkers, among them Leibniz,
who argued that space has no independent metaphysical status. Space is
nothing more than the set of actual and possible relations physical objects
have to one another.Not only is there no such thing as an immaterial space
containing material objects;it is not possible to conceive of such a thing ex
isting apart from such objects and their relations.Nowit isnot at allapparent
that the existence ofa particular kind of physical object can show anything
about the metaphysical status ofspace. In recent decades,many writers have
commented on this argument,expressingavariety of opinions about the basis
of Kant's claim. Among the more recent writers whohave,Ithink,correctly
interpreted Kant's line ofthought, there is still disagreement about whether
the argument isconvincing. The nature and merit ofKant'sfirst incongruent
counterparts argument deservessomemore attention.
But even more puzzling is what happens to the argument after 1768.
Only two years later, in his Inaugural Dissertation of 1770, Kant claims
that the existence of incongruent counterparts supportshisviewthat spaceis
a pure form of sensibility, or the mode by which subjects perceive objects
external tothem.Furthermore,inthefinal two essaysmentioningincongruent
counterparts,in the Prolegomenato any Future Metaphysics (1783)and the
Metaphysical Foundations ofNatural Science (1786), Kant emphasizes the
conclusion that space is transcendentally ideal, that it isa merely subjective