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Review: [untitled]Author(s): Michelle GrierReviewed work(s): Possible Experience: Understanding Kant's Critique of Pure Reason byArthur CollinsSource: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 110, No. 1, (Jan., 2001), pp. 135-137Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2693616Accessed: 02/05/2008 15:40

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BOOK REVIEWS

The Philosophical Review, Vol. 110, No. 1 (January 2001)

POSSIBLE EXPERIENCE: UNDERSTANDING KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. By ARTHUR COLLINS. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Pp. xix, 200.

The central thesis of this book is clear. According to Collins, Kant is not an idealist of any sort. Kant is not an idealist, on Collins's view, because he (Kant) neither denies the existence of a non-mental reality (dogmatic idealism) nor claims that we cannot be sure that there is any non-mental reality (problem- atic idealism) (22; cf. 23). Because Kant explicitly (and, it is implied, correct- ly and successfully) criticizes both dogmatic and problematic forms of ideal- ism, Collins concludes that the appellation "idealist" is altogether improperly ascribed to Kant. One might ask straightaway whether there might not be another form of idealism that might properly be ascribed to Kant, for exam- ple, "transcendental idealism." Alas, according to Collins, Kant's own tenden- cy to refer to his philosophy as "transcendental idealism" is quite unfortunate and quite misleading. It is misleading because "it suggests that Kant claims that the domain of objects is just a domain of ideas, that is, of mental repre- sentations" (24). Really?

What follows is essentially and for the most part a sustained effort to undermine broadly idealist (and more specifically phenomenalist) interpre- tations of Kant. What all such readings of Kant presuppose, we are told, is an untenable Cartesian standpoint. According to Collins, "Unless a reader sup- poses that Kant holds that people are acquainted only with the contents of their own minds, he cannot propose an idealist interpretation of Kant's phi- losophy" (5). In keeping with this idea, Collins examines many of the passages that have traditionally been taken by interpreters to suggest a phenomenal- ism, or idealism. Kant's claims that "appearances are just representations" and "representations are in us" are essentially explained by Collins as meaning simply that spatiotemporal objects are known through the subjective condi- tions of our cognitive apparatus, and not that such spatiotemporal objects are mere ideas somehow "in the mind." Collins asserts that only an unwarranted slide from the claim that these conditions are subjective to the claim that objects represented in accordance with such conditions are necessary and solely "mental" could possibly account for the idealist/phenomenalist inter- pretation that he is keen to avoid (9; see also 20).

That Kant himself does not subscribe to this Cartesian "starting point" is clear, according to Collins, from his assertion that spatiotemporal objects are immediately apprehended by us. Moreover, Kant takes spatiotemporal objects of experience ("appearances") to be genuine external objects (not merely mental entities or ideas). That this doesn't entail any form of idealism is clear, according to Collins, from the fact that the objects that appear to us are not

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mental items, but are the affective products of really existing entities that are completely mind-independent: things in themselves (15, 19, 28). Collins's understanding of Kant's philosophy unfolds as follows: things in themselves are real (existing) things, they are the things that "appear" to us under the subjective conditions of our knowledge, the things that affect us (26-30). Collins urges this view against what he takes to be the predominant position on Kant.

At this point, one might feel a bit perplexed. Surely, this is not a view that has not occurred to Kant scholars before! Indeed, it is the problems associat- ed with just this view that have led many careful commentators to question the coherence of Kant's philosophy. The notorious problem of the status of things in themselves has generated volumes, and not just because Kant schol- ars are (let's be blunt) Cartesian dunces, but because there seems to be a problem with Kant's position. If we only have access to "appearances" then what is the nature of any assertion about the existence and mind-independ- ent status of things in themselves? Collins tries to avoid this difficulty by embracing what has come to be known as the "methodological" interpreta- tion of the transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves (58). That is, he wants to say that things in themselves are not objects "distinct" from appearances, but that appearances are things in them- selves, as considered under the subjective conditions of our cognitive consti- tution. But he undermines his own efforts here, for instead of strictly adher- ing to the claim that "things in themselves" are ways of "considering appear- ances" (in which case they are modes of considering and thus entirely mind- dependent), he also wants to say that we can know that they exist independent of the mind, that they are the "realities" that affect us and lead to our repre- sentations (appearances), and so on (55, 81)). Indeed, Collins goes so far as to state that things in themselves (which he repeatedly either refers to as "ideas" or claims that we can only access as ideas; cf. 29, 30) are themselves "transcendentally real" (30). I submit that to suggest that ideas have tran- scendental reality is a problem. Moreover, since Collins himself defines tran- scendental realism as the error that stems from taking the ideas in the mind to be "absolute realities" or "things in themselves" (23), his own tendency to waver between talk of "things in themselves" as ideas (on the one hand) and as really existing things (on the other) lands him in the camp of those whose errors he takes Kant to be criticizing.

One might wonder how much of Collins's argument rests on the purely semantic issue about what we mean when we call Kant a "transcendental ide- alist." According to Collins, transcendental idealism is not "really" idealism, because it doesn't map onto any of the forms of idealism advocated by Kant's predecessors. For the most part, indeed, Collins is concerned to show that, at the empirical level, Kant does not deny that there are objects "outside our minds." I agree with Collins that Kant wants to argue that spatiotemporal

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objects (appearances of outer sense) are not merely "ideas in the mind." To say this is simply to emphasize the empirical reality of appearances. But it is important to balance this claim with the claim that considered transcendental- ly, appearances are not mind-independent. Noting this, Collins states that the transcendental ideality of appearances indicates that the "mental particulars we apprehend by virtue of our inner receptivity ... are appearances and not absolute realities" (23). Here Collins himself states that what are apprehend- ed are "mental particulars," and this already suggests the kind of phenome- nalism he wants to deny. Even apart from this, however, we still have the rather difficult issue of reconciling a robustly non-idealist interpretation of Kant's philosophy with the transcendental ideality of appearances. Call it "idealism" or not, Kant seems to be arguing that we don't have access to things as they (really?) are in themselves. It is this more complicated claim that bothers the scads of commentators to which Collins seems to be objecting. Which brings us to another point.

Who are all these commentators, all the legions of philosophers who fall into the camp of "idealist interpreters of Kant"? According to Collins,. the set includes most commentators to date, and they all err (ultimately) because of their own Cartesian prejudices. Still, one longs for some more detailed engage- ment with various philosophers who are ostensibly making the common Cartesian error. However, it is not until the final chapter that Collins discusses, in rapid succession, the works of other commentators. But here, it seems to me that the works of others tend to get unfairly summarized and dismissed.

Collins is surely correct to call our attention to the Cartesian influences that may impact our reading of Kant. He is surely correct that Kant himself sought to undermine many of the tenets of Descartes. And he is surely correct that Kant argues that appearances are empirically real. But the deeper issues and problems associated with Kant's (yes, I'll say it!) "transcendental idealism" nevertheless remain.

MICHELLE GRIER University of San Diego

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