A Companion to Rationalism || Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism

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kant and the two dogmas of rationalism

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Kant and the Two Dogmas of Rationalism

HENRY E. ALLISON

Philip Kitcher (1981) suggested that Kant came close to writing “Two Dogmas ofEmpiricism.” Although I do not intend to challenge this intriguing suggestion, I shallattempt to take the matter in the opposite direction and propose that with at leastequal justification Kant may be thought to have come close to producing a workentitled “Two Dogmas of Rationalism.” In fact, in many ways the Critique of PureReason is just such a work. Or so I shall argue.

The discussion is divided into five parts. In the first, I specify the two dogmas andattempt both to explain their inherent plausibility and to provide a preliminary sketchof Kant’s reaction to them. The remaining parts are devoted to a consideration of fourdomains in which these dogmas are at work and the Kantian critique of them is car-ried out: the nature of human cognition; the distinction between analytic and syn-thetic judgments; the nature of space and time; and the ideality of appearances. Farfrom being isolated topics, we shall see that they are intimately related to one another.

I

The first and best known of these dogmas is often referred to as the “predicate-in-notion principle” or some close variant thereof. It states that in every true propositionthe predicate is contained in the concept of the subject. The second does not come witha familiar name and I shall call it the “reducibility principle.” It maintains that sensibleknowledge acquired through experience is reducible [in principle] to the intellectualvariety, which is supposedly attained through the pure understanding independentlyof any appeal to experience. Although each of these dogmas is associated directly withLeibniz, who was clearly the most important representative of the rationalist traditionfor Kant, they actually have a broader scope and may be viewed as underlyingassumptions of the project of classical rationalism.

But before proceeding with the analysis of these dogmas and the Kantian critique ofthem, there are two points to be noted. First, they reciprocally entail one another. Ifone assumes the predicate-in-notion principle, then one is thereby committed to thereducibility principle and vice versa. Second, they are mirror images of Quine’s morefamous dogmas, namely, the analytic–synthetic distinction and what Quine terms

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A Companion to RationalismEdited by Alan Nelson

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“reductionism,” which he initially characterizes as “the belief that each meaningfulstatement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediateexperience” (Quine 1963: 20).

In considering the first of these dogmas, it is important to realize that, howeverstrange the predicate-in-notion principle may seem to us today, it has an inherentplausibility, which was exploited by its rationalist proponents. In fact, for Leibniz, it isa simple consequence of a consideration of the nature of truth and it underlies thewell-known rationalist dictum that “whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive about athing is true or is assertable of the thing in question” (Leibniz 1989a: 26). As Leibnizfamously put it, “It is common to every true affirmative proposition, universal andparticular, necessary or contingent, that the predicate is in the subject, that is, that thenotion of the predicate is somehow contained in the notion of the subject” (Leibniz1989b: 95).

Here, as elsewhere when dealing with this topic, Leibniz is effectively asking: inas-much as a true proposition is, by definition, one which correctly affirms (or denies) apredicate of a subject, what could its truth consist in other than its predicate beingincluded in (or, in the case of negative propositions, excluded from) the notion orconcept of the subject? To Leibniz, at least, this seemed to be virtually axiomatic.

Nevertheless this seemingly innocent “axiom” has a number of not so innocentimplications, which Leibniz exploits in constructing his philosophical system. First andforemost, if everything truly predicable of x is contained in the concept of x, then forevery x there must correspond a complete concept containing everything truly predi-cable of it. Moreover, since finite beings like ourselves obviously do not possess suchconcepts, at least not of individual things, it follows that we must regard them aspossessed by God.

As is well known, Leibniz uses this principle to distinguish between necessary andcontingent truths. The former are those in which the containment of the predicate inthe concept of the subject can be ascertained by a finite process of analysis (eitherimmediately or by deduction from evident axioms), whereas the latter are those inwhich this is not possible, because an infinite analysis would be required to uncoverthe predicate in the concept of the subject. The former pertain to the domain of “eter-nal truths,” which features, but is not limited to, those of mathematics; the latterpertain to what Leibniz calls “truths of fact.” It is not that one cannot determine asimple truth of fact, say that I (Henry Allison) am currently sitting before my computer,without providing an infinite analysis; it is rather that one cannot fully understandthe grounds of this truth (its sufficient reason) apart from possessing the completeconcept of Henry Allison. Consequently, it is in this sense that our sensible cogni-tion, such as the example cited above, must be viewed as reducible in principle (thoughnot by us) to the intellectual or purely conceptual variety, which is just the seconddogma.

Expressed in Kantian terms, this means that all true propositions are analytic, eventhough only a small subset of these (truths of reason) can be shown to be such,because we lack the requisite capacity for an infinite analysis. Clearly, if this is true,then the analytic–synthetic distinction must either be rejected outright or viewed as avariable one, which is entirely a function of one’s level of cognition or, what amountsto same thing, of the “adequacy” of one’s ideas. In other words, what is synthetic for

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some might be analytic for others, who possess a more adequate concept of the sub-ject, and it necessarily is so for God. In that case, however, the distinction appears tolose much of its philosophical bite.

Consequently, it is no coincidence that precisely this objection was raised againstKant by his Leibnizian opponents (see Allison 1973: 36–46). Indeed, since Kant usesthis distinction as one of his major weapons in his attack on traditional metaphysics,of which the Leibnizian is a prominent example, they had good reasons for doing so.For, seen from their point of view, Kant’s distinction rests upon a problematic assump-tion of its own, which is the converse of the Leibnizian, namely, not everything thatpertains to x (that may be truly predicated of it) is contained in the concept of x. Infact, when looked at from a Leibnizian or, more generally, a rationalist point of view,this Kantian assumption seems highly paradoxical. For what could conceivably groundthe truth of the predication of some property of x, other than its somehow beingalready contained in x’s complete concept?

It is precisely at this point that the battle lines between rationalism and the criticalphilosophy are to be drawn. Kant’s answer to this question is simple and, from hispoint of view, obvious; namely, that such predication is made possible through anappeal to the intuition of x. Rationalism could hardly accept this response, however,since it rests on the assumption of a difference in kind (not merely degree) betweenintellectual concepts and sensory intuitions. And to accept this would require rational-ism to abandon its second dogma.

Kant’s retort to this is his so-called “Copernican revolution.” In order to appreciatethis, however, we must revisit briefly the rationalist position, against the backdrop ofwhich the Kantian revolution is to be understood. As we have seen, essential to thisposition, and to the conception of truth on which it is based, is the notion of thecomplete concept of an individual. By its very nature, such a concept must be infinitelycomplex, since it encompasses everything truly predicable of the individual, includingits relations to other individuals and ultimately to the universe as a whole. Althoughrationalism denies that we (or any finite being) actually have such concepts, it tacitlyassumes the legitimacy of what we might term the “concept of a complete concept” asan idea that is to be approached asymptotically, if never fully attained. Moreover, sinceit thereby appeals to a concept accessible only to God in its analysis of human cogni-tion, rationalism may be appropriately described as committed to a theocentric para-digm (see Allison 2004: ch. 2).

By contrast, Kant’s Copernican revolution may be viewed as a turn to an explicitlyanthropocentric model of cognition, a “paradigm shift” if you will. It is not, however,merely a shift to the human understanding (or human nature) as the first object ofphilosophical reflection. That is the standpoint of classical empiricism, which forKant is equally “pre-Copernican.” It is rather something much more radical andcounter-intuitive, namely, the assumption that the human understanding is itselfsomehow the source of the normative principles on which our cognition is based.Indeed, this is the true significance of Kant’s famous “experiment”: “Let us once trywhether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that theobjects must conform to our cognition” (Kant 1998: 110). To suggest that objectsconform to our cognition is not to imply that the human mind somehow creates itsworld ex nihilo; it is rather to advance the epistemological thesis that objects must

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conform to the (subjective) conditions through which alone they can become objectsfor us. Elsewhere, I have termed the latter “epistemic conditions” (Allison 2004:chs. 1, 2).

For present purposes, however, the essential point is that for Kant, God’s knowledgeis not a norm against which the human variety is to be measured and found wanting,but a problematic concept through a contrast with which it is to be understood. Ex-pressed in Kantian terms, this conception of cognition serves a “critical” rather than a“dogmatic” function: it frees us from one picture of cognition (the theocentric) in orderto enable us better to appreciate another (the anthropocentric or Copernican). More-over, it is only against this backdrop that we can begin to understand not merelyKant’s critique of rationalism but also the “critical” project as a whole.

II

Since the kind of cognition that pertains to the anthropocentric paradigm is discursive,I call Kant’s claim that our cognition is of this sort the “discursivity thesis.” To say thatour cognition is discursive is to say that it is based on concepts; but since conceptsrequire some already given data to be brought under them, discursive cognition is tobe understood as consisting in the application of concepts to sensory intuition, whichis the sole source of the requisite data. Thus, such cognition, at least as Kant conceivesit, assumes an ineliminable duality or distinction in kind between its sources or condi-tions. As Kant puts it at the very beginning of the Transcendental Analytic:

Our cognition arises from two fundamental sources in the mind, the first of which is thereception of representations (the receptivity of impressions), the second the faculty forcognizing an object by means of these representations (spontaneity of concepts); throughthe former an object is given to us, through the latter it is thought (in relation to thatrepresentation (as a mere determination of the mind). Intuition and concepts thereforeconstitute the elements of all our cognition, so that neither concepts without intuitioncorresponding to them in some way nor intuition without a concept can yield a cogni-tion. (Kant 1998: 193)

As this passage indicates, what makes intuitions and concepts irreducible to oneanother is that the former are connected with the receptivity of the senses and the latterwith the spontaneity of the understanding. Accordingly, all our intuitions, includingthe pure or a priori variety, are sensible in nature. And since without the contributionof sensibility there would simply be nothing to be thought through concepts, sensibil-ity makes an absolutely indispensable contribution to human cognition. It is equallyimportant, however, to keep in mind that sensory intuition is merely a necessary andnot also a sufficient condition of discursive cognition. As its name suggests, the latteralso requires concepts through which the intuitively given content can be thought.According to Kant’s oft-cited formula:

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is thusjust as necessary to make the mind’s concepts sensible (i.e., to add an object to them in

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intuition) as it is to make its intuitions understandable (i.e., to bring them under con-cepts). (Kant 1998: 193– 4)

As a first step in understanding this doctrine, we must become clear about thenature of the two elements (concepts and intuitions) required for discursive cognition.But since this is a complex issue, about which there remains a good deal of contro-versy in the literature, I can here attempt to provide merely a greatly simplifiedaccount (for a fuller treatment, see Allison 2004: ch. 4).

In his Logic, Kant defines an intuition simply as a “singular representation”(repraesentatio singularis) (Kant 1992: 589). He repeats this in the Critique, adding thatit is “immediately related to the object” (bezieht sich unmittelbar auf den Gegenstand )(Kant 1998: 399). Thus, a Kantian intuition has two defining properties – singularityand immediacy – which turn out to be inseparable. What a Kantian intuition does is topresent particulars to the mind and, for reasons that should become clear shortly, itcan do so only if it presents these particulars “directly” or “immediately,” that is,without the mediation of a concept. Moreover, it must be kept in mind that this isintended to apply to the “genus” intuition, which itself contains two radically distinctspecies: the sensible and the intellectual. The former is characterized as “sensible”because it requires an “affection” by some object; the latter is termed “intellectual”because it consists in the spontaneous excogitation of an object, without any sensoryinput. Although our intuition is necessarily of the former sort and is the only kindwith which we are acquainted, Kant thought the division important for at leasttwo reasons: first, it helps to distinguish his view from that of Leibniz and other ration-alists; second, it indicates that the characterization of our intuition as sensible isinformative, which, in turn, is necessary for appreciating the discursive nature of ourcognition.

Correlatively, in his Logic Kant characterizes a concept (as opposed to an intuition)as “a universal representation, or a representation of what is common to severalobjects, hence a representation insofar as it can be contained in various ones.” Con-sequently, it is redundant to speak of universal or common concepts, as if conceptscould be divided into universal, particular, and singular. “Concepts themselves,” Kantremarks, “cannot be so divided, but only their use” (Kant 1992: 589). In the parallelaccount in the Critique, Kant notes that a concept, in contrast to an intuition, refers toits object “mediately by means of a mark [eines Merkmals] which can be common toseveral things” (Kant 1998: 399). In other words, because of its generality, a conceptcan refer to an object only by means of features that are also predicable of other objectsfalling under the same concept. Thus, unlike a Leibnizian complete concept, a Kantianconcept, no matter how complex, can never refer uniquely to a particular object. Thatis why intuition is required to acquaint the mind with particulars, thereby determin-ing whether or not the concept has an application.

Since a concept is a collection of marks (or “partial representations”), which arethemselves concepts, every concept may be viewed as a collection of concepts. Forexample, the concept of gold is that of a yellow, malleable metal that is soluble in aquaregia etc., each of which is itself a concept potentially applicable to other things besidethose composed of gold. Kant does not, however, understand such a collection of marksin the manner of Berkeley and Hume, as merely the product of frequent experience,

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joined together in the mind by principles of association and brought under a generalterm. Instead, he considers concepts as rules for the unification in thought (not theimagination) of these marks. Accordingly, to have the concept of gold is to have thethought of these (and other) marks as linked together conceptually. This is not to saythat being a yellow metal somehow entails being soluble in aqua regia. The point israther that if something is thought to be gold it must also be thought as containingproperties corresponding to its marks, that is, as metal, yellow, malleable, and solublein aqua regia, etc.

This presupposes what has been aptly termed the “fixity” of concepts (Beck 1967:237), and we shall see below that it provides the key to understanding the Kantianview of analyticity. But we first need to explore somewhat more fully the nature andfunction of concepts in general, which requires understanding their connection withjudgment. In fact, the fundamental unit of discursive thought for Kant is the judg-ment, not the concept. Discursive thinking, for Kant, just is judging and the latterconsists in the subsumption of sensory data provided by intuition under concepts stem-ming from the understanding. Thus, while there can be no judging without concepts,it also follows that “the understanding can make no other use of its concepts than thatof judging by means of them” (Kant 1998: 205).

In the same context, Kant also remarks that “Concepts . . . serve as predicates ofpossible judgments” (Kant 1998: 205). Although the point is crucial, it can be easilymisunderstood. In characterizing concepts in this way, Kant is not limiting their func-tion to that of being logical or grammatical predicates. For example, in Kant’s paradig-matic example of a judgment, “All bodies are divisible” (which, incidentally, is analyticfor him), both concepts function as predicates in the judgment. Since the subject con-cept, “body,” provides the initial content for the judgment, it may be said to stand in amore direct, though still not immediate, relation to the object, because no concept cando that. Thus, the judgment affirms that the x’s (the data given in the intuition towhich the concept is applied) also fall under the broader concept “divisibility.” Thisanalysis enables Kant to claim:

All judgments are . . . functions of unity among our representations, since instead of animmediate representation a higher one, which comprehends this and other representa-tions under itself, is used for cognition of an object, and many possible cognitions arethereby drawn together into one. (Kant 1998: 205)

Setting aside obscurities in Kant’s account of judgment, it might appear that hisdiscursivity thesis, which is completely intertwined with the conception of judgment,is not particularly newsworthy or controversial. Indeed, it has been viewed by present-day philosophers in much the same way as the predicate-in-notion principle was re-garded by Leibniz and his fellow rationalists. Typical of this approach is Strawson, forwhom the discursivity thesis reduces to the inescapable necessity in any thinkingabout experience or empirical knowledge to assume a “duality of general concepts, onthe one hand, and particular instances of general concepts on the other” (Strawson1966: 20).

Although this may be correct as far as it goes, to leave matters here is to ignorethe revolutionary nature of Kant’s thesis. In order to understand this, however, it is

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necessary to view this thesis in its historical context as challenging both rationalismand empiricism. The challenge to empiricism is obvious and need not be pursued fur-ther here. Since the empiricists (with the partial exception of Locke) tended to viewideas as particular images, they really had no place for anything like a Kantian con-cept and the discursive view of cognition it entails. But the challenge to the rationalistsclearly calls for some comment, since they typically did not deny conceptual represen-tation as such and were as opposed as Kant to the “picture theory” of the empiricists.

The issue is a subtle one and once again I cannot here pretend to give it the atten-tion it deserves (for a fuller discussion, see Allison 2004: ch. 2). The main point is that,even though the rationalists did not altogether reject conceptual representation andthe discursive model of cognition it entails, they did tend to regard it as inferior todirect intuitive cognition. This is perhaps clearest in the case of Spinoza, who famouslydistinguished between ratio, which is just discursive cognition, and what he termsscientia intuitiva, which supposedly acquaints us directly with the essence of individualthings, rather than indirectly by means of concepts applicable to a number of things(common notions) (Spinoza 1985: 477–8). In Malebranche, Spinozistic intuitionbecomes the capacity to see all things in God; while in Leibniz, Spinoza’s distinc-tion between ratio and scientia intuitiva reappears as the contrast between “blind” or“symbolic” and “intuitive” knowledge. Moreover, though both may be adequate, onlythe latter is “absolutely perfect,” which might be glossed as “fully adequate” (Leibniz1989a: 25).

In fact, the point is already evident from rationalism’s characteristic tendency toelevate the idea, with its normative properties of clarity, distinctness, and adequacy,over the judgment as the basic epistemic unit. Once the idea is given such a status, thefirst dogma of rationalism becomes unavoidable and anything like Kant’s discursivitythesis is a non-starter.

From the Kantian standpoint, perhaps the most important feature of rationalism’sapproach to conceptual representation and discursivity is its ambiguous view of theepistemic function of sensory intuition. Rationalists tend to deny any essential cogni-tive role for such intuition. Although it is generally acknowledged that some sensoryinput is required to set the mind’s cognitive machinery in motion, it is also claimedthat this is merely a consequence of our finitude and does not conflict with the coredoctrine that sensory cognition is the lowest and least adequate kind and ought to bereplaced by more adequate modes of cognition to the extent possible. At the same time,however, by considering cognition in this way, rationalism shows itself committed tothe thesis that the senses of themselves do yield some cognition, albeit of the lowestgrade. Moreover, here again, rationalism comes into conflict with Kant’s discursivitythesis, since the latter affirms that without the contribution of the understanding therecould be no cognition at all, not even the highly inadequate kind assumed by therationalists.

Finally, it must be emphasized that rationalism’s ambiguous treatment of the sen-sory component of human cognition is no mere accident or failure to recognize theobvious. It is rather a direct consequence of its commitment to a theocentric paradigm.That is why, from Kant’s point of view, nothing less than a Copernican revolution isrequired in order to recognize the essentially discursive nature of human cognitionand the indispensable but limited role therein of sensibility.

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III

Since present-day discussions of the analytic–synthetic distinction, the most influen-tial of which is clearly Quine’s, tend to focus on the concept of analyticity and thenotorious difficulties involved in giving it an acceptable definition or characteriza-tion, it is not surprising that Kant’s critics concentrate on his manifestly inadequateaccount of analytic judgments in the Introduction to the Critique. As we all know, Kantthere describes such judgments in two supposedly equivalent ways: (1) those in which“the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something that is (covertly) contained inthis concept A”; (2) as “those in which the connection of the predicate is thoughtthrough identity” (Kant 1998: 141). For reasons that I shall not rehearse here, theseformulations have met with almost universal disapproval from Kant’s time to thepresent. Equally important, though less often noted, they give the false impression thatsynthetic judgments are to be regarded virtually as an afterthought, since they appearto be defined in essentially negative terms as those that are not analytic. And from thispoint of view, which is that of those who, like Quine, understand the analytic–synthetic distinction in empiricist terms, this effectively means that synthetic judg-ments as such are seen as relatively unproblematic, with the whole problem beingwith those that are supposedly both synthetic and a priori.

Although the centrality of the problem of synthetic a priori judgments to the criticalproject can hardly be gainsaid and will be touched upon below, this approach to Kant’sanalytic–synthetic distinction is seriously misleading for at least two reasons. First, itignores the fundamentally anti-rationalistic orientation of the distinction itself, that is,it fails to recognize its significance as an essential ingredient in the Kantian critique ofthe first dogma of rationalism. As we have seen, this dogma poses a challenge to thepossibility of synthetic judgments in general, at least insofar as they are thought to bemore than provisionally or relatively synthetic, not merely to those that are supposedlya priori. Second, it neglects the close connection between the analytic–synthetic distinc-tion and Kant’s discursivity thesis or, what amounts to the same thing, his account ofjudgment. The distinction, after all, is claimed to be between different species of judg-ment (not statements, propositions, or the like). Accordingly, if we are to understandthe distinction between these two species, it is necessary to keep in mind their com-mon genus: the judgment.

Obvious as it may seem, the latter point is generally neglected, perhaps because ofthe casual way in which Kant introduces the distinction in the Introduction to theCritique and the corresponding portion of the Prolegomena, neither of which makes anyreference to the nature of judgment as such. Nevertheless, this may easily be explainedby their location in the texts prior to any discussion of the topic. Like many philoso-phers, Kant was frequently confronted with the problem of not being able to say every-thing that needed to be said on a topic at once. Thus, his initial presentation of manyimportant distinctions tends to have a provisional character and often needs to bereinterpreted in light of subsequent treatments of the subject. The distinction betweenanalytic and synthetic judgments is no exception.

Fortunately, elsewhere Kant does indicate, if not fully explain, the connectionbetween the analytic–synthetic distinction and his underlying theory of judgment.

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Perhaps the most helpful of these is his brief discussion of the matter in the publishedversion of his Logic, where the distinction between the two species of judgment isdrawn in terms of a contrast between a formal and a material extension of knowledge(Kant 1992: 606–7).

Analytic judgments are there said to provide a formal extension of knowledge byclarifying or explicating what is already contained in a given concept. This involvesthe uncovering of implications of which one may not have been previously aware, butwhich are derivable by strictly logical means from this concept, which once again isregarded as fully determinate or “fixed.” Kant takes “All bodies are extended” as anexample of an analytic judgment, which he renders schematically as “To everything xto which the concept of body (a + b) belongs, belongs also extension (b)” (Kant 1992:607). This shows that in analytic judgments the predicate (b) is related to the object(x) by virtue of the fact that it is already contained (as a mark) in its concept (thelogical subject). Analytic judgments are, therefore, “about” an object; they have alogical subject and, as Kant’s example shows, they may also have a real one or object.Nevertheless, since the truth or falsity of the judgment is determined merely byanalyzing the concept of the subject, the reference to the object becomes otiose (seeBeck 1967: 230).

In his polemic with Eberhard, who pressed him on the matter from a Leibnizianpoint of view, Kant supplements this account by introducing what amounts to adistinction between immediately and mediately analytic judgments. “All bodies areextended” is immediately analytic, because “extension” (together with “figure,” “impen-etrability,” etc.) is a mark of the concept “body.” By contrast, “All bodies are divisible”is only mediately analytic because “divisibility” is not itself part of the concept (logicalessence) of body, but rather of one of its constituent marks (extension). In other words,it is a mark of a mark. Despite the fact that this implies that the judgment rests on aninference and in that sense extends our knowledge, Kant insists that this does notamount to a difference in kind, since in both cases the predicate is derived from theconcept of the subject by a finite process of analysis.

This should suffice to show that Kant’s conception of analyticity is of a piece withthe discursivity thesis. As the preceding account indicates, both rest upon the concep-tion of a concept as a set of marks (themselves concepts), which are thought togetherin an “analytic unity,” and which can serve as a ground for the cognition of objects.These marks collectively constitute the intension of a concept. One concept is con-tained in another, just in case it is either a mark of the concept or a mark of one of itsmarks. In either case, it is subordinated to the concept in which it serves as a mark,which is precisely the relation that is brought out in an (affirmative) analytic judg-ment. Thus, unlike most contemporary conceptions of analyticity, Kant’s is thoroughlyintensional.

A synthetic judgment, by contrast, extends our knowledge in a “material” sense.Kant’s example is “All bodies have attraction,” which he renders schematically as “Toeverything, to which the concept of body (a + b) belongs, belongs also attraction (c)”(Kant 1992: 607). Like its analytic counterpart, this judgment asserts a connectionbetween the predicate (c) and the object (x), which is thought through the concept(a + b). But, unlike the latter, it asserts this independently of any connection between

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the predicate and the concept of body. To be sure, in the judgment the predicate isconnected with this concept; but the connection is grounded in, and mediated by, thereference of both to an intuition of the object. Consequently, the judgment extends ourknowledge of x (in this case, of all x’s) by providing a determination or property of xthat is not already contained in its concept. This is what is meant by a “materialextension.”

Looked at from this point of view, the problem is to explain how a material exten-sion is possible at all, whether it be a priori or a posteriori. And since this is pre-cisely what is denied by rationalism’s first dogma, Kant’s account of the possibilityof such judgments may be viewed as his response to the challenge posed by thatdogma. But, even though this effectively transforms the notorious problem of the syn-thetic a priori into a special case of a more general problem rather than a freestandingone, synthetic a priori judgments present difficulties of their own, which call for somecomment.

Within the Kantian framework, what is distinctive about such judgments is thatthey require both pure concepts and pure intuitions. It is obvious that they requirepure concepts as predicates and some corresponding intuition. Without the formerthey could make no claim to universality and necessity (the criteria of the a priori), andwithout the latter they would not be synthetic. Consequently, the question is why anempirical intuition does not suffice and a pure one is required. Indeed, the furtherquestion arises whether something like the latter is even possible. Certainly, Kant’spredecessors, rationalist and empiricist alike, had no place for such a hybrid concep-tion. Moreover, Kant himself poses the problem in a particularly sharp form when heasks, “How is it possible to intuit something a priori?” (Kant 2002a: 78). This is aproblem that arises only for intuitions (not concepts), since it suggests that somethingcould be given in intuition prior to and independently of our experiential encounterwith it, that is to say, a priori.

I shall return to the latter question in the next section, in connection with a con-sideration of Kant’s views on space and time, which, as pure forms of sensibility, arealleged to be the sources of the required pure intuitions. Before doing so, however, Ishall address the first and lesser of these questions. In brief, the answer is that a merelyempirical intuition does not suffice for a synthetic a priori judgment because of itsparticularity. As the representation of a particular individual, an empirical intuitioncannot exhibit intuitively the universality thought in the concept. To cite a familiarmathematical example: as synthetic, the judgment that the sum of the interior anglesof a triangle is equal to two right angles must be grounded in an intuition of a triangle,while as a priori it cannot be grounded in the intuition of any particular triangle. Itspossibility thus rests upon there being some non-empirical or pure intuition of some-thing like “triangularity as such,” that is, a singular representation that nonethelesscan “attain the generality of the concept, which makes this valid for all triangles, rightor acute etc.” (Kant 1998: 273). The problem is somewhat more complex in the caseof judgments involving pure, as opposed to mathematical, concepts, because thesecannot be directly exhibited in intuition. For example, we cannot just “see” or perceivea cause, though we can judge that certain occurrences are such. As I have arguedelsewhere, however, Kant’s solution to this problem is to assign such a role to thetranscendental schema (Allison 2004: ch. 8).

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IV

Kant’s account of space and time is, among other things, a direct assault on rational-ism’s second dogma. Without explicit reference to Leibniz, Kant initially characterizesthe latter’s position as the view that space and time are “only determinations or rela-tions of things, yet ones that would pertain to them even if they were not intuited.”This is contrasted with Kant’s own view that they are “relations that only attachto the form of intuition alone, and thus to the subjective constitution of ourmind, without which these predicates could not be ascribed to anything at all” (Kant1998: 157).

Kant here expresses his partial agreement with Leibniz. They are one in rejectingthe Newtonian absolutistic theory in favor of a relational one, but they differ radicallyin the understanding of the nature and function of the relations involved. As Kantmakes clear, the issue between them turns on the connection of these relations to the“subjective constitution of our mind,” which he here equates with its form or mannerof our sensible intuiting. By contrast, for Leibniz, at least as Kant reads him, humansensibility and its subjective conditions have nothing to do with the true nature ofspace and time, though, as we shall see below, they do play a major role in explainingwhy we think about them in the way that we do.

In order to understand Kant’s critique of the Leibnizian view (I shall limit the discus-sion to space), it is necessary to take a brief look at the latter. Here the chief text isLeibniz’s correspondence with Clarke, which contains his fullest discussion of the mat-ter and was closely studied by Kant, as indeed it was by most eighteenth-centuryphilosophers. Although Leibniz’s main concern was to criticize the Newtonianabsolutistic theory rather than to spell out or to defend his own view, under pressurefrom Clarke he was led to do both, particularly in his fifth and final letter. Space, asLeibniz there construes it, is nothing but the order of coexisting phenomena and inlight of this he attempts to explain why we nonetheless naturally tend to think of it inthe Newtonian (and perhaps commonsensical) manner as something more than suchan order.

Since Leibniz viewed the latter as a fiction (and a theologically dangerous one atthat), it is perhaps not totally surprising that his account seems almost Humean atpoints. Basically, his claim is that space viewed as something more than an order is akind of imaginative gloss, which results from our inability to perceive distinctly minutedifferences between the relations of the situation of things, which is itself a conse-quence of the limitation of our senses. This inability, Leibniz further argues in a proto-Humean fashion, leads to a confounding of resemblance or agreement with numericalidentity. On this basis, he then contends that the notion of an absolute space, whichsomehow subsists apart from the order of things in it, is a “mere ideal thing,” meaningthereby a fiction (Leibniz 1956: 69–72). Thus, though the “true,” that is, adequate,representation of space as an order of coexisting things is purely intellectual, the onethat we actually have contains a sensory component, which reflects the limits of ourconceptual capacities.

This is diametrically opposed to the Kantian view, according to which space servesas a condition of the representation of such an order rather than as a sensibly distortedor confused product thereof. Later in the Aesthetic and elsewhere, Kant expresses his

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disagreement by claiming that the Leibnizians falsify the concept of sensibility and ofappearance by “considering the distinction between sensibility and the intellectual asmerely logical” (Kant 1998: 186). “Logical,” as Kant here understands it, means adifference in degree (clearness and distinctness) rather than a difference in kind, whichhe terms “transcendental.” Thus, the claim that the Leibnizians “falsify” the conceptsof appearance and sensibility, which are strictly correlative for both Leibniz and Kant,is equivalent to the claim that they regard what is, in fact, a difference in kind betweentwo radically distinct species of cognition (the sensible and the intellectual) as if it weremerely a matter of degree. Once again, this is the second dogma of rationalism, which,as already noted, is entailed by the first.

Kant’s basic strategy is to turn the tables on Leibniz. Rather than being derived fromsome kind of prespatial ordering, conceivable by the intellect alone, which, due to theunavoidable limits of our senses, is mistaken for something more, the representation ofspace is now seen as a subjective condition of the cognition of the very order fromwhich Leibniz claims it is acquired. Kant further argues that this representation standsin an ineliminable relation to human sensibility, which blocks the kind of reduction or,if one prefers, “logicification” of space that is affirmed by the Leibnizians.

In the Kantian lexicon, this dual thesis amounts to the claim that the representationof space is both a priori and intuitive (with the same applying, mutatis mutandis, totime). After establishing this to his own satisfaction in what in the second edition iscalled the “Metaphysical exposition of this concept” (Kant 1998: 174), Kant pro-ceeds to argue in the “Transcendental exposition of the concept of space” (Kant 1998:176) that this alone is able to account for the synthetic a priori status of geometry, athesis that a Leibnizian rationalist must deny, since it runs directly counter to thefirst dogma.

This is Kant’s notorious “argument from geometry,” which has come under intensecriticism ever since the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, if not before. Fortu-nately, for present purposes, this immense issue may be ignored, since Kant viewed hisaccount of geometry as an application or confirmation of the result already attained inthe “Metaphysical exposition” rather than as an independent argument. AlthoughKant is committed by his account of the conditions of the possibility of synthetica priori judgments in general to the view that if geometry is to be regarded as bothsynthetic and a priori it must rest on a pure intuition of space, this is merely a neces-sary and not also a sufficient condition of the possibility of geometry so conceived.Accordingly, I shall here consider the argument of the “Metaphysical exposition” in itsown terms, bracketing the issue of the adequacy of Kant’s views on geometry.

This argument is composed of four sub-arguments. The first two attempt to showthat the representation of space is a priori rather than empirical and the second twothat it is an intuition rather than a concept. In essence, the apriority arguments con-tend that the representation of space must be regarded as a priori, since it serves as acondition of the experience of any spatial ordering of things and, therefore, cannot, onpain of circularity, be regarded as derived from such an experience. Although thiscertainly cuts against the Leibnizian view, it also applies to any broadly empiricisticaccount of the matter. Nevertheless, taken by itself, it seems perfectly compatible withthe possibility that the representation of space is an a priori concept (an innate idea),which, as such, has nothing essentially to do with human sensibility. Consequently,

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we must look to the intuition arguments to establish the connection with sensibilitythat is necessary in order to refute the Leibnizian view. Indeed, if the representation ofspace were a concept, the second dogma of rationalism would hold.

Assuming his underlying discursivity thesis, according to which concept and intui-tion constitute the two elements of human cognition, Kant in effect argues by elimina-tion. Since space cannot be the former it must be the latter, that is, the representationof an individual that is somehow immediately present to the mind, prior to and inde-pendently of any act of conceptualization. It is not that we cannot form concepts ofspace (clearly, we can and do), but rather that any such concepts presuppose a priorintuition. Thus, the original representation of space must be an intuition.

Although Kant provides two distinct arguments for this thesis, one from the singu-larity of space (we can represent to ourselves only a single space of which all particularspaces are delimited parts) and the other from its infinity or limitlessness, I shall hereconsider these together, since they turn on essentially the same point, namely, Kant’sview of a concept as a general representation. We have seen that a concept, so under-stood, is composed of marks (partial representations), which are themselves conceptsand which can serve in turn as marks of other concepts. In other words, every con-cept, qua concept, has both an intension and an extension. The former is constitutedby the marks of which it is composed and the latter by the concepts falling under it ofwhich it serves as a mark. In a later terminology, one might say that the formerdetermines the sense of a concept and the latter its reference.

Given this, Kant has little difficulty in showing that the representation of spacepossesses neither of the defining features of a concept, though, as a singular represen-tation, it does fit the definition of an intuition. First, unlike the relation between aconcept and its marks, we cannot think of this single space as a product of its parts(particular spaces). On the contrary, unlike the relation between a concept and themarks of which it is composed, that is, its intension, the parts of space presuppose thewhole and can be thought as parts only in relation to it. Second, these parts arethought as in space rather than as falling under it, as they would if space were aconcept and they constituted its extension.

It is in the context of his conclusions from the analysis of the representation of spaceas both pure (a priori) and intuitive that Kant explicitly addresses the problem of thepossibility of an a priori intuition posed above. His solution is that such an intuition ispossible only “if it contains nothing else except the form of sensibility, which in me assubject precedes all actual impressions through which I am affected by objects” (Kant2002a: 79). In other words, the only thing that could conceivably be intuited a prioriby discursive cognizers such as ourselves is the form or manner in which the sensorydata for the thought of objects are given to us in empirical intuition. As devoid ofsensation (the “matter” of empirical intuition) such a form would be a priori, while aspertaining to intuition rather than to thought it would belong to sensibility. And sincethe representation of space has been shown to be a pure intuition, it follows that thecontent of this intuition (what is actually intuited a priori through it) is merely asubjective form under which objects are given to us in empirical intuition.

Kant concludes from this that though “empirically real” (applicable to everythingencountered in human experience), space is nonetheless “transcendentally ideal,”that is, a nonentity insofar as one abstracts from the subjective conditions of human

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sensibility and considers it as either a property or relation of things as they are inthemselves. And since Leibniz is committed to the latter alternative, it follows that hisview is incorrect.

It might seem that a Leibnizian could attempt to evade the force of this argument bychallenging the discursivity thesis on which it is based. For if Kant’s sharp concept–intuition distinction be denied, one can hardly argue in the Kantian manner that therepresentation of space must be intuitive simply because it is not conceptual. In fact,the denial of the discursivity thesis might be thought to open up conceptual space forthe possibility that our representation of space is a kind of intellectual intuition, albeitone that must remain confused for finite beings such as ourselves. It is not so easy toargue in this way, however, since, as we have seen, it would involve a host of ques-tionable epistemological and metaphysical assumptions of its own, not the least ofwhich is a commitment to the two dogmas.

V

Although Kant had already characterized space and time as transcendentally ideal inthe Aesthetic, he only gets around to defining transcendental idealism itself in theDialectic. He does so in two places, only one of which is retained in the second edition.In the one that is retained, Kant depicts this idealism as the doctrine that “all objects ofan experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., mere representations,which, as they are represented, as extended beings or series of alterations, have out-side our thoughts no existence grounded in itself.” This is contrasted with what Kantterms “transcendental realism,” which is charged with making “these modifications ofour sensibility into things subsisting in themselves, and hence makes mere representa-tions into things in themselves” (Kant 1998: 511).

As Kant here describes these two forms of transcendentalism, they appear to en-compass the entire philosophical landscape. One either regards the objects of possiblehuman experience as appearances or one does not, in which case they are viewed asthings in themselves. Moreover, if this is true, it clearly follows that transcendentalrealism must be understood in a very broad sense as including all other philosophicalpositions, many of which are not generally regarded as forms of realism. In fact, as Ihave argued at length elsewhere, transcendental realism may be viewed as the flip sideof the theocentric paradigm (Allison 2004: ch. 2). In other words, it is to be under-stood as a kind of metaphilosophical stance from which the problem of human know-ledge is considered, rather than as a distinct metaphysical or epistemological position.

If this is correct it follows that transcendental realism’s opposite, transcendentalidealism, is likewise to be considered in this way, that is, as a metaphilosophical stance,rather than, as it usually is taken to be, a distinctive metaphysical doctrine. Moreover,so considered, it may be seen as a correlate of the anthropocentric paradigm, which isthe product of Kant’s Copernican revolution.

In order to appreciate what is at stake here, it is essential to recognize that the veryidea of a Copernican revolution, as described above, brings with it an idealistic com-mitment of a sort, inasmuch as it regards the human mind (with its sensible andintellectual conditions) as the source of the norms and principles through which what

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counts as “objective” is determined by and for cognizers such as ourselves. Since theseconditions which prominently include the sensible conditions through which objectsare given in intuition (space and time), it follows that we can cognize objects only asthey appear to us under these conditions, not as they may be in themselves independ-ently of them. And, as we have already seen, Kant’s position here differs in toto fromthe rationalist’s with its theocentric paradigm, which assumes that the cognitive taskis to apprehend truths that hold independently of any conditions or principles of thehuman mind, that is, to come as close as possible to the God’s-eye view of things fromwhich alone the truth is fully accessible. Indeed, we have seen that precisely such aview underlies the Leibnizian reduction of the sensible to the intellectual. Althoughthis is not a reduction that we can perform, it is one that the theocentric paradigmrequires us to assume is performed by God.

The essentially methodological nature of Kant’s idealism becomes more apparentwhen one examines the key distinction between appearances and things in themselveson which it is based. To begin with, “things in themselves” is to be understood aselliptical for “things as they are in themselves” or, more precisely, “things consideredas they are in themselves” (see Prauss 1974: 13–23). In other words, the Kantiandistinction is between two ways of considering things, that is, the very objects of ourexperience, in a reflection on the conditions of their cognition (transcendental reflec-tion) rather than between two ontologically distinct kinds of thing. And since, lackinga capacity for an intellectual intuition, sensibility and understanding are the onlycognitive tools by means of which these things can be considered, it follows that toconsider them independently of their relation to human sensibility and its a prioriconditions just is to consider them as putative objects of some “pure understanding,”which is not ours. Once again, this is to adopt the theocentric paradigm. Moreover,this also explains why Kant insists that we can think things as they are in themselves,even though we cannot cognize them as such.

Before proceeding further, it must also be noted that, in spite of the daunting theo-logical terms in which transcendental realism’s conception of the cognitive task hasbeen expressed, it is the picture implicitly adhered to by common sense, which natur-ally assumes that the proper object of cognition is a reality existing an sich. Anythingshort of this simply does not count as knowledge, or, if it is regarded as such, it canbe only knowledge of how things seem to us rather than of how they really are.At one place in the Critique Kant refers to this assumption as the “common butfallacious presupposition of the absolute reality of appearance” (Kant 1998: 535),while at another he characterizes it as the “common prejudice” (Kant 1998: 664).Under either description, the rationalist view is closer to common sense than theKantian.

Nevertheless, it may still seem odd for Kant to charge rationalism, particularly theLeibnizian variety, with affirming the absolute reality of appearance, thereby effec-tively regarding the spatiotemporal objects of human experience as if they were thingsin themselves. Since Kant’s main objection against Leibnizian rationalism is that itsystematically denies a positive cognitive role for sensibility, and since it is preciselybecause of the ineliminable role of the latter that Kant thinks that we are acquaintedmerely with things as they appear rather than as they are in themselves, it might seemmore appropriate for Kant to charge such rationalism with simply denying the reality

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of appearances rather than with conflating them with things in themselves. Consider,for example, the following passage from Leibniz, which is typical of his thought on thematter:

If Bodies are phenomena and judged in accordance with how they appear to us, theywill not be real since they will appear differently to different people. And so the reality ofbodies, of space, of motion, and of time seems to consist in the fact that they are phenom-ena of God, that is, the object of his knowledge by intuition [scientia visionis]. And thedistinction between the appearance bodies have with respect to us and with respect toGod, is, in a certain way, like that between a drawing in perspective and a ground plan.For there are different drawings in perspective, depending upon the position of the viewer,while a ground plan or geometrical representation is unique. Indeed, God sees thingsexactly as they are in accordance with geometrical truth, although he also knows howeverything appears to everything else, and so he eminently contains in himself all otherappearances. (Leibniz 1989c: 199)

This passage provides a nice illustration of how Kant appropriated Leibnizian termi-nology, while giving it a radically different sense. For both thinkers, bodies in spaceand time are “mere phenomena,” and space and time themselves are regarded as“ideal.” From the Kantian point of view, the difference is that bodies are not “phenom-ena of God,” since there is no such thing, and space and time are transcendentallyideal. In other words, looked at from the framework of the anthropocentric paradigm,the latter are forms of human sensibility, which partially define the conditions andlimits of possible experience for beings like ourselves, rather than regrettable, thoughunavoidable, sources of the limitations of our cognition. For the same reason, Kantwould reject the favorite Leibnizian metaphor of a perspective. It is not that we per-ceive the same world that God does, albeit from a limited perspective or point of view,it is rather that we perceive our own world, that of possible experience, which isgoverned and limited by the conditions of our cognition.

This does not mean, however, that our world is, ontologically speaking, less than“really real,” since there is no other. What it means instead is that the traditionalidea of a God’s-eye view of things (a “view from nowhere”) is to be understood as alimiting concept, helping to define the conditions and limits of our cognition, ratherthan as a goal to be approached asymptotically. In fact, the reason why such alimitation is necessary is that the human understanding, as a faculty of thought, hasa natural tendency to extend itself beyond its proper sphere, which is limited byour forms of sensibility. Thus, like the Cartesian will, the reach of the Kantianunderstanding exceeds its grasp. Moreover, for Kant, the clearest example of this inmodern philosophy is the Leibnizian monadology and the two dogmas on which it isbased.

References and Further Reading

Allison, H. E. (1973). The Kant–Eberhard Controversy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.

—— (2004). Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, new enlarged edn. New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress.

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Beck, L. W. (1967). Can Kant’s synthetic judgments be made analytic? In Moltke S. Gram (ed.),Kant: Disputed Questions. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

Kant, I. (1992). Lectures on Logic (Michael Young trans. and ed.). Cambridge Edition of theWorks of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

—— (1998). Critique of Pure Reason (Paul Guyer and Allen Wood trans.). Cambridge Edition ofthe Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

—— (2002a). Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics: Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 (HenryE. Allison and Peter Heath eds., Gary Hatfield trans.). Cambridge Edition of the Works ofImmanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

—— (2002b). On a discovery whereby any new critique of pure reason is to be made superfluous by anolder one: Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 (Henry E. Allison trans.). Cambridge Edition of theWorks of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kitcher, P. (1981). How Kant almost wrote “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (and why he didn’t).Philosophical Topics, 12, 217–49.

Leibniz, G. W. (1956). The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence (H. G. Alexander ed.). Manchester:Manchester University Press.

—— (1989a). Meditations on knowledge, truth, and ideas. In Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber(eds. and trans.), Philosophical Essays (pp. 23–7). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

—— (1989b). On freedom. In Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (eds. and trans.), PhilosophicalEssays (pp. 94–8). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

—— (1989c). Notes for letter to Des Bosses, February 5, 1712. In Roger Ariew and DanielGarber (eds. and trans.), Philosophical Essays (pp. 199–200). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Prauss, G. (1974). Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich. Bonn: Bouvier.Quine, W. V. O. (1963). From a Logical Point of View. New York: Harper and Row.Spinoza, B. de (1985). Ethics. In Edwin Curley (ed. and trans.), The Collected Works of Spinoza.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Strawson, P. F. (1966). The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. London:

Methuen.

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