Roche, Transcendental Idealism

Transcendental Idealism: A Proposal
Andrew F. Roche
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 51, Number 4, October 2013, pp. 589-615 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Transcendental Idealism: A Proposal

A N D R E W F. R O C H E *
there may be no succinct way to articulate Kants doctrine of transcendental idealism without begging certain interpretive questions. Roughly, however, it is the tripartite doctrine that
(1) The objects of outer sense, along with those of inner sense, are mere appearances, not things in themselves. (2) Space and time are merely forms of these appearances, and thus things in themselves are neither spatial nor temporal. (3) We can have no cognition (Erkenntnis) of things in themselves.
Ones understanding of these claims turns mostly on how one understands the distinction between things in themselves and appearances. And this distinction is where much of the interpretive controversy lies. In this paper I offer what is, to the best of my knowledge, a new way to understand what things in themselves and, especially, appearances are. Of course, I am aiming for novelty not for the sake of novelty but because after over two hundred years of scholarship, no reading of transcendental idealism has seemed to do justice to the various things that Kant says about it or to the work to which he puts it. In section 1 of what follows, I cover some of the major readings of transcendental idealism and the objections that they run into. I do this not primarily to show that they are awedthe difculties that they face have been well documented.1 My goal instead is to tease out some important criteria that a reading of transcendental idealism ought to satisfy. In section 2, I produce a provisional sketch of my own account, which purports to satisfy all of them. My claim will be that we can make sense of transcendental idealism by way of an appeal to phenomena like the bent-stick illusion. My position will not be that we can model transcendental idealism on illusion, as though our experience of spatio-temporality were illusory for Kant. As will become clear, such a reading is
Lucy Allaiss criticisms of phenomenalist readingsroughly, although not exactly, what I refer to below as two-worlds readingsand epistemological or methodological readings are especially thorough; see Allais, Kants One World, 66068.
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* Andrew F. Roche is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Centre College.

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a non-starter. Rather, my position will be that we can model the mind-world relationship according to transcendental idealism on an understanding of certain kinds of judgments about the contents of our illusions and dreams. I elaborate in sections 36. I address, in particular, how appearances, which according to Kant are spatial and temporal,2 can be identical to (some) things as they are in themselves, which are neither. A major objection to my analysis will be that it goes too far: that it in fact makes transcendental idealism incapable of accounting for cases of illusion, dreaming, and the like. I respond to this worry in section 7, where I also develop more fully my analysis of Kants notion of an appearance. In section 8, I offer some brief remarks on what my account suggests about two important subjects relevant to Kants idealism: the problem of affection and his conception of freedom. I conclude with yet briefer remarks in section 9. The reading that follows rests signicantly on the insights of others. My contribution, if it is a contribution, consists less in a new insight than in seeing how those of others can be protably brought together. Kant, I suspect, would have appreciated this spirit of synthesis.
1. three interpretations of and three criteria for transcendental idealism

We can cover a lot of territory if we divide readings of transcendental idealism into three kinds.3 I will call the rst the distortion reading.4 Distortion readings claim that according to transcendental idealism, we are subject to a particularly thoroughgoing illusion. The world in itself is neither spatial nor temporal. Yet it appears to be both. We experience this world and yet systematically misrepresent it. This reading need not deny that the illusion is useful. It need not deny that if we failed to experience the world as both spatial and temporal we would not experience it at all. But a useful illusion is an illusion all the same.5 I will call the second kind of reading the ontological reading.6 This covers a broad class of interpretation. It says simply that the distinction between appearances and
Kant holds that all appearances are temporal, only outer appearances spatial. For ease of presentation, I will tend to say simply that appearances are spatial and temporal. 3 The way in which I am dividing these readings is close to the way that Charles Parsons does so in The Transcendental Aesthetic, 8491. 4 See Parsons, The Transcendental Aesthetic, 84. 5 I know of no one who unequivocally embraces the distortion reading as an interpretation of Kant, but some seem at least tempted by it or think that Kant on occasion construed transcendental idealism this way. For example, see H. A. Prichard, Kants Theory of Knowledge, 73; S. F. Barker, Appearing and Appearances in Kant, 28089; Robert Howell, A Problem for Kant, esp. 333, 34445; Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 34, 333; and Debating Allison, 12. More often, the distortion reading operates as a bogey (e.g. Sebastian Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, 296; and Henry E. Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism, rev. ed., 56, 4347). Rae Langton ultimately adopts a kind of distortion reading, although she does not say so explicitly (Kantian Humility, ch. 10, esp. 21317). Granted, for Langton, phenomena, not things in themselves, are the objects of experience (215). But phenomena, according to Langton, are neither spatial nor temporal, even if they appear to be (21517). 6 I believe I owe this label to Ralf Bader.
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things in themselves is ontological. This claim might get eshed out in various ways. I will focus on a species of the ontological reading, specically two-worlds readings.7 These claim that appearancesthe objects of experienceexist, literally, in the mind whereas things in themselves are mind-independent. An ontological reading need not be a two-worlds reading. Here I am thinking of James Van Cleves proposal that appearances are virtual objects that are logical constructions out of mental states of perceivers8 and of the readings of Rae Langton,9 Lucy Allais,10 and Tobias Rosefeldt,11 respectively, that the distinction between appearances and things in themselves amounts ultimately to a distinction between two kinds of property that mind-independent objects possess. These four readings share the idea that what might look to be a distinction between two kinds of entity or realms of entities (cf. Kants grand talk of a world of sense and the world of understanding12) actually reduces to something humbler, something that is hardly the distinction between two worlds.13 The interpretations of Van Cleve,14 Langton, Allais, and Rosefeldt15 are important contributions. I set them aside because a discussion of
7 Advocates of two-worlds readings include Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Werke, 2:299310; Colin M. Turbayne, Kants Refutation, esp. 238; and Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 335 (but cf. Debating Allison, 1213). P. F. Strawson also seems to endorse a two-worlds reading (Bounds of Sense, 238, 246; and see Entity and Identity, 24142). 8 Van Cleve, Problems from Kant; see esp. 812, 5859, 123, and 150. 9 Langton, Kantian Humility, 1214, 20; see also Kants Phenomena. 10 Allais, Kants One World and Kants Idealism and the Secondary Quality Analogy; see also Intrinsic Natures. 11 Rosefeldt, Dinge an sich. 12 Gr, 4:451; see also Bxxviii. References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the rst- and secondedition pagination (A and B, respectively). Otherwise, the pagination to which I refer in Kants texts is that of the Akademie Textausgabe. Quotations are from the translations listed in the bibliography; German quotations are from the Akademie Textausgabe. 13 Perhaps it is worth noting that Kant calls this distinction crude (Gr, 4:451) and elsewhere expresses concern that talk of a mundus sensibilis and a mundus intelligibilis has the potential to mislead (A24857/B30913). 14 One difculty for Van Cleves view is that on it, appearances cannot be identical to things as they are in themselves, something, I will soon stress, Kant embraces. Van Cleve is well aware of this concern, however, and at least has a thoughtful response to it (Problems from Kant, 14450). There is another problem, though. On Van Cleves reading, our representations are responsible for the existence of appearances/phenomena (to the extent that Van Cleve will grant that they exist at all [5859]). But Kant says that the idealism that he promotes is less radical. Our representations do not produce their objects as far as their existence is concerned, even if they can be determinant of [objects] a priori (A92/B125; bold font represents Kants emphasis; see also Br, 11:395; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 414; and Langton, Kantian Humility, 21213). (For a different concern, see Rosefeldt, Review of Problems from Kant, 26566.) 15 Langtons reading faces the opposite difculty of Van Cleves: it seems not to explain how Kant is an idealist at all. (Langton acknowledges that this is a problem for her view [Kantian Humility, 6, 27]. Her considered response is nuanced. See Kantian Humility, ch. 10; and see n. 5 above. For criticism, see A. W. Moore, Review of Kantian Humility, 11819; Lorne Falkenstein, Langton on Things in Themselves, 51, 54; and Karl Ameriks, Kant and Short Arguments.) Allaiss and Rosefeldts readings, by contrast, account for how spatio-temporal properties are ideal, since they think that while these properties are located in mind-independent objects, their existence nevertheless depends on human minds. On their readings of Kant, spatio-temporal properties are relational properties of objects where one of the relata is the possible human experience of the objects in which they inhere (for Rosefeldt, they are, specically, dispositional properties of mind-independent objects [Dinge an sich, 18495]). Both think that this is an advantage for their own views over Langtons (Allais, Kants One World, 668; Kants Idealism and the Secondary Quality Analogy, 467, 483n96; and Rosefeldt, Dinge an sich,
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the difculties that they face will not further motivate the criteria that atter the interpretation that I offer below. I will call the third and nal reading the methodological reading.16 This reading asks that we construe the distinction between appearances and things in themselves neither as a distinction between how things seem and how they really are nor as an ontological distinction.17 Rather, Kants distinction contrasts two ways of considering the same things,18 ways of considering objects not meant to track two classes of entity but rather to reect two distinct epistemological agendas (similarly, a hiring committee might have the agenda of considering a candidate in abstraction from the candidates genderalternatively, it might not19). Henry Allison, who is probably the best-known advocate of this position, holds that to consider things as they appear is to consider them in the way in which they are presented to discursive knowers with our forms of sensibility.20 To consider them as they are in themselves is to consider them in abstraction from those features that we must sensibly represent them to have in order to experience them at all.21 The distortion reading faces the obvious problem that Kant rejects it. If I say: in space and time intuition represents both outer objects as well as the self-intuition of the mind as each affects our senses, i.e., as it appears, that is not to say that these objects would be a mere illusion.22 We are not to construe transcendental idealism as implying that our representations of space, time, and spatio-temporal properties are misrepresentations.23 The moral here is that a reading of transcendental idealism should satisfy what we might call the no-illusion criterion. Two-worlds readingsrecall that I am focusing on this brand of ontological readingavoid this difculty. If appearances are literally in ones mind, and if things in the mind can be spatial and temporal, then it is no illusion that appearances appear to be spatial and temporal. They appear spatial and temporaland
172). But I doubt that the kind of mind-dependence that either urges is the kind that Kant advocates. Such a reading makes poor sense of how spatio-temporality is something we put into the objects of our experience (Bxviii; see also A125); it is also hard to see how it can explain how space and time themselves are mind-dependent, since neither are, for Kant, properties of mind-independent objects. I develop these concerns in Roche, Allais on Transcendental Idealism, 36269. 16 This reading may be more familiar as a two-aspect reading (see Ameriks, Recent Work, 5). Allaiss and Rosefeldts work, however, has convinced me that it would be better to reserve the label two-aspect for a broader category, with methodological readings serving as a species (Allais, Kants One World, 658; Rosefeldt, Dinge an sich, 170, 17275). Allaiss and Rosefeldts readings, in particular, might be glossed, following Rosefeldt, as ontological two-aspect readings. 17 E.g. Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism, rev. ed., 98. 18 H. E. Matthews, Strawson on Transcendental Idealism, 208. 19 Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 33738. 20 Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism, rev. ed., 16; see also 52, 56. 21 See Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism, rev. ed., 1119 (esp. 1617), 52, 612; Allison, Debating Allison, 3435. Other advocates of a methodological approach include Graham Bird, Kants Theory of Knowledge: An Outline of One Central Argument, 37; Matthews, Strawson on Transcendental Idealism; Gerold Prauss, Kant und das Problem, e.g. ch. 1; Robert Pippin, Kants Theory of Form, ch. 7; and Gerd Buchdahl, Kant and the Dynamics of Reason, 140, 147. Perhaps H. J. Paton (Kants Metaphysic of Experience, 1:61, 422) ought also to be included. 22 B69; see also Prol, 4:287, 29094, and 37475. 23 Perhaps the textual evidence is even stronger. If we do not perceive things in themselves at all, then we cannot misperceive them to have properties that they lack. Kant says on more than one occasion that we do not perceive things in themselves at all (A44/B62, A27677/B33233; Prol, 4:29293).
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they really are! But two-worlds readings face a difculty that the distortion reading does not. Kant says that the object as appearance is to be distinguished from itself as object in itself [dieser Gegenstand als Erscheinung von ihm selber als Object an sich unterschieden wird].24 These are not, for Kant, distinct objects.
[E]ven if we cannot cognize these same objects as things in themselves, we at least must be able to think them as things in themselves. . . . Now if we were to assume that the distinction between things as objects of experience and the very same things as things in themselves, which our critique has made necessary, were not made at all, then the principle of causality, and hence the mechanism of nature in determining causality, would be valid of all things in general as efcient causes. I would not be able to say of one and the same thing, e.g., the human soul, that its will is free and yet that it is simultaneously subject to natural necessity, i.e., that it is not free.25
It is denitional of two-worlds readings to deny any identity between things as they appear and things as they are in themselves. This will not do. The moral here is that a reading of transcendental idealism should satisfy what we might call the identity criterion.26 Methodological readings satisfy the identity criterion. Indeed, they insist that Kant acknowledges only a single set of objects, a set of objects that we can consider in two distinct ways. The trouble that methodological readings face is explaining in what sense Kant is an idealist.27 The fact that one can consider things certain wayse.g. in abstraction from various properties that they appear to havehas by itself no implications for whether those things really are those ways.28 But Kant needs to establish that, for example, things in themselves are neither spatial nor temporal if he is to establish the ideality of space and time. Neither the distortion reading nor the two-worlds reading faces this objection. Each can explain how mind-independent reality is not spatio-temporal; each can explain how space and time are in some way mind-dependent. The moral here is that a reading of transcendental idealism should satisfy what I shall call the ideality criterion.29
B69; my emphasis. Bxxvixxvii; my emphases; see also Bxviiixixn, A38/B55, A24952; Gr, 4:457; Prol, 4:287, 289, 344; KpV, 5:95, 97; Br, 10:341n (this last from Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, 291). 26 Van Cleve and Allen Wood insist that there is also good prima facie evidence for readings that hold that things in themselves are distinct from appearances (Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 146; Wood, Kant, 64, 70). I agree. Thus it would be good to produce an interpretation that can make sense of passages that sound two-world-ish. I believe that the proposal that I go on to defend does this, and I emphasize the commonality between my proposal and two-worlds readings near the end of section 6. 27 Ameriks, Kantian Idealism Today, 334; Hoke Robinson, Two Perspectives, 41928; Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 4; Allais, Kants One World, 668; and Kants Idealism and the Secondary Quality Analogy, 46263. 28 Terence Irwin, Morality and Personality, 3738; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 33738; and Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 8. 29 I think that Allison would insist that this objection misunderstands the nature of transcendental idealism. To claim that space and time are ideal is not to pronounce on their ontological status (Kants Transcendental Idealism, rev. ed., 98). Rather, it is to insist that we are warranted in asserting that things are spatial and temporal (4849, 121) only from the human standpoint (A26/B42). But Kant was after more than simply holding that we are, from some point of view, warranted in asserting that objects are, e.g. spatial. Rather, they are spatialand knowing this is why we are warranted in asserting their spatiality. One of the benets, Kant thinks, of having established transcendental idealism is the accompanying explanation of how the world corresponds, necessarily, to our
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2. a provisional sketch
The distortion reading has going for it that it satises the identity and ideality criteria. The trouble is that it fails to satisfy the no-illusion criterion. It fails because according to the reading, our experiences represent things in themselves as spatial and temporal, and Kant claims that they are neither. This is to make our experiences misrepresentative of the world. Perhaps, however, we can take over what is good about the distortion reading and x this problematic part. Instead of holding that the targets of our experiences are things as they are in themselves, we might instead hold that their targets are those same thingsbut as they appear to us.30 Consider, for example, my experience in the bent-stick illusion. The stick is not really bent. It appears to be, however. I will argue below that one could holdi.e. one could judgewith some plausibility, that the stick, as it appears, is bent. I propose that this way of understanding our representation, in judgment, of the stick is a good model for understanding our experiences generally on the doctrine of transcendental idealism. I began this paper with a relatively uncontroversial gloss of this doctrine. According to that gloss, (1) the objects of possible experience are appearances only, not things in themselves. This does not mean that we experience a numerically distinct realm from mind-independent reality. Rather, I suggest (although with qualication to come in section 7) that it means that the target of our experiences is that same reality with, and only with, whatever intentional, i.e. represented, features that it appears to have. Additionally, according to transcendental idealism, (2) space and time are mere forms of appearances, and things in themselves are neither spatial nor temporal. I propose that this is just to say that space and time are merely intentional featuresalbeit intentional features that are necessarily representedof the things that we can represent in experience. Analogously, while we may judge, truly, that the stick in the water, as it appears, is bent, it is not really so. The bent-ness is a merely intentional feature of the stick. Finally, on the doctrine of transcendental idealism, (3) we can have no cognition of things in themselves. My analysis has nothing new to say about the nature of cognition (Erkenntnis). However we understand this representational state (compared, e.g. to mere thought [Gedanke]), my proposal thus far implies that it can exist only when its targets are things with, and only with, whatever intentional features they appear to have, not when its targets are things simpliciter.
representations of space and time and the principles of geometry. Without the doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant believes, it would be quite impossible to make out whether the intuitions of space and time, which we do not derive from experience but which nevertheless lie a priori in our representations, were not mere self-produced fantasies, to which no object at all corresponds, at least not adequately, and therefore geometry itself a mere illusion, whereas we have been able to demonstrate the incontestable validity of geometry with respect to all objects of the sensible world for the very reason that the latter are mere appearances. (Prol, 4:292)
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I borrow the locution of a target from Earl Conee and Theodore Sider, Riddles of Existence, 7980.
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3. a defense of the readings model

The most pressing concern about the foregoing sketch is likely to be that there is some skullduggery in how I described the bent-stick case. Few will deny that the stick appears bent. But it can sound like wordplay to infer that the stick, as it appears, is bent. Since I am modeling transcendental idealism on this construal of the bent-stick case, it can understandably seem as though there is something sophistical in the proposal. I shall try to alleviate this worry. To do so, I will embellish the bent-stick case and also consider another example. Suppose that an experimenter has a very boring research project: she writes down peoples descriptions of what they see when they look at a stick in a glass of water. Suppose that I am one of her subjects. Before us is a stick in a glass of water. Neither of us is nave. We both appreciate that our experience of the stick as bent is illusory. She asks me to describe the phenomenology. Here is what I say: I see a glass nearly full of water. A stick protrudes from the water. It is bent. Of course, I could have qualied this remark. I could have said, The stick appears bent. But that is not what I said. I said, in a context in which it was plain that I was describing how the stick appears to me, It is bent. The second case I appropriate from Derk Pereboom.31 Suppose that I dream that you y to Aruba. In fact, you have never been to Aruba. Now suppose that I tell you that I had a dream about you. With this understanding between us, I proceed to describe what transpired in the dream, and I say such things as You went to Aruba. Again, I could have said, I dreamt that you went to Aruba. But it is cumbersome to qualify every utterance. So I said simply, You went to Aruba. What are we to make of these utterancesor, to anticipate my bringing this discussion back to Kant, these judgments? I think that people of good faith might have different reactions, and it will not be my concern to advocate one or another. My goal is just to show the seriousness of one of them because it is, in the end, what I was recommending above as a model for transcendental idealism. One reaction to the judgments, made in these special circumstances, that the stick is bent and that you ew to Aruba, is that they are both, strictly, false. Now, perhaps this analysis is right. But consider how odd it would be to say to the person who claims that the stick is bent that what he said was false. Of course, we can imagine him responding, the stick is not really bent. You asked me to describe how it appears to me. There is at least a strong temptation to say that his claim was in fact true: it accurately describes what it purported to describe, viz. the stick as it appeared to him. It is not as though he said that the stick is transparent or on re. We could avoid this difculty if instead we held that in each case we are dealing with two objects rather than one. Perhaps in the bent-stick case, as some sensedatum theorists have held, we must distinguish what the person sees directlya bent-stick sense-datumfrom the mind-independent object. And in the case of the dream, there would be the dream you and the real you. These yous are, accordingly, better understood as counterparts rather than identical objects.
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Pereboom, Kant on Transcendental Freedom, 554.
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As I said of the previous reaction: perhaps this is (instead) the right analysis. Once again, I want only to register an important misgiving, viz. the feeling that the respective objects are more closely related than this proposal suggests. When I tell you that I had a dream about you, and then proceed to say such things as You went to Aruba, for example, that seems to be a claim about you, not some dream counterpart who merely resembles you in certain ways. A third reaction holds that in each case there is only one object. It says instead that the properties attributed to it are not, on analysis, inconsistent.32 When, for example, I claimed that the stick is bent, that at rst seemed in tension with the claim that it is (in reality) not bent. But there would be no inconsistency if my claim were really that the stick has the property of appearing-to-me-to-be-bent. That property is consistent with the property of being not bent. Likewise, perhaps when I said that you went to Aruba, what I was really saying was that you had the property of being-dreamt-by-me-to-have-own-to-Aruba. A difculty for this analysis is that those making the judgments would not be saying what they mean. I said: You went to Aruba. But what I meant was: You had the property of being-dreamt-by-me-to-have-own-to-Aruba. And it is at least not obvious that this is what I meant. One is tempted to hold that I said exactly what I meantin the context in which I said it, which is one in which we both appreciated that I was relaying the details of my dream.33 A fourth (and nal) analysis avoids all of these difculties.34 To help articulate it I will appeal to a new example. Suppose that Christopher knows that Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Suppose that he does not know that Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain. Presumably, then, he will not know that Samuel Clemens wrote Huckleberry Finn. We might say accordingly that Mark Twain has the property of being-known-by-Christopher-to-have-written-Huckleberry-Finn whereas Samuel Clemens does not. But this does not lead us to infer that Twain and Clemens are different individuals. Christophers knowledge comes with an important restrictionhe knows the author of Huckleberry Finn only under the name Mark Twainand this is why we may not distinguish numerically Twain from Clemens with the property of being-known-by-Christopher-to-have-written-Huckleberry-Finn. Insofar as Twain is represented as Twain, Twain has the property of being-knownby-Christopher-to-have-written-Huckleberry-Finn. Insofar as Twain is represented as
See also Pereboom, Kant on Transcendental Freedom, 554; and Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 14849. 33 There is another worry looming here. Suppose that I am wrong and that there is no reason to resist this analysis of my judgment about my dream. There is then the business of using this analysis to make sense of transcendental idealism. And we run into problems when we attribute to Kant the view that in judging that objects have spatio-temporal properties we never mean that they have these properties. Of course, Kant does think that transcendental idealism is a novel and important doctrine. He says that the Critique of Pure Reason opposes all familiar concepts (Prol, 4:261). Its acceptance requires abandoning certain commonly accepted philosophical conceptions of our relationship to the world. He does not, however, think that it runs against common sense. We must place the errors that he is correcting not in the laps of the vulgar, but rather in the laps of philosophers. It is a feature of Kants empirical realism that objects of experience straightforwardly have spatial properties (Pereboom, Kant on Transcendental Freedom, 554n30). This is a genuine point of contact between Kant and Berkeley (e.g. Three Dialogues, 21920). 34 Again, see Pereboom, Kant on Transcendental Freedom, 554.
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Clemens, Twain lacks the property of being-known-by-Christopher-to-have-writtenHuckleberry-Finn. It is this individual, only insofar as he is represented in different ways, who has or lacks this property. It is the individual, represented as Twain or as Clemens, who has or lacks this property, not the individual simpliciter. Likewiseon the analysis under considerationthe reason that the statement, The stick is bent, comes out true is that the stick is being considered only insofar as it appears to me. The stick simpliciter is not the truth-maker here. What gives the claim a truth value is instead the stick, with, and only with, the intentional (represented) features that present themselves to me in experience. Those features include bent-ness. That is why the claim turns out to be true. On this analysis, then, the judgments, The stick is bent and You ew to Aruba, end up being true without positing novel objects and without suggesting that the person who utters them judges differently from how he means. The truth-makers are, respectively, the stick as it appears and you as you appeared in my dream. Avoiding the foregoing pitfalls is a genuine virtue. It is reason to take the analysis seriously. The analysis is not, I think, sophistical. Consequently, I also think it is fair game to see how well we might model transcendental idealism on it, as I did in section 2.
4. addressing the identity criterion

But wait. The stick, as it really is, is not bent. The stick as it appears, I am suggesting, is. Things as they are in themselves, says Kant, are neither spatial nor temporal. Things as they appear, however, are. If the stick as it really is is identical to the stick as it appears, and if things as they appear are identical to (some) things as they are in themselves, then the foregoing claims seem in conict. What motivates this worry is the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals: if A = B, then A and B have all of their properties in common. Thus, by contraposition, if A and B failed to have all of the same properties, they could not be identical.35 Many, however, have thought that the indiscernibility of identicals has limited scope.36 We do not, for example, establish that Twain and Clemens are numerically distinct by noting that the former has the property of being-known-by-Christopher-to-have-written-Huckleberry-Finn whereas the latter does not. Let intensional properties be properties whose true attribution to objects depends on how those objects are described, or conceived, or perhaps more generally, represented (e.g. as Mark Twain). Let extensional properties be all properties that are not so dependent. According to the reaction to the indiscernibility of identicals that I am now considering, we can establish that A and B are numerically distinct only by way of extensional properties. That A and B have different intensional properties, such as being-known-by-Christopher-to-have-written-Huckleberry-Finn, shows nothing.37
Here, see also Michael Della Rocca, Spinozas Argument, 194. Perhaps Leibniz is an example. See Benson Mates, Philosophy of Leibniz, 13032. It must be noted, however, that Leibniz and Mates formulate the principle (really, Leibnizs Law, which states also that if A and B have all of the same properties, then A = B) differently from the way that I do, which may matter; see Philosophy of Leibniz, 123. 37 I have been helped here by Della Roccas discussion in Spinozas Argument, 19395.
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If Kant thought that spatio-temporal properties are intensional, then there would be no difculty for the identity criterion in the fact that Kant claims that appearances are spatio-temporal and things as they are in themselves not. Without qualication, however, this solution is unacceptable. Kant plainly thinks that spatiotemporal properties do distinguish objects numericallyspecically, appearances from appearances. Even if, for instance, two drops of water were otherwise qualitatively identical, the fact that they exist in different spaces is, for Kant, enough to distinguish them.38 The only way out of this difculty, then, would be to hold that whether a property is extensional (or intensional) can vary according to the circumstances. But is this proposal so far-fetched? We do not distinguish A from B by way of the property of being-known-by-Christopher-to-have-done-such-and-suchunless, for instance, Christopher is omniscient. We grant that this property is intensional only because we naturally assume that Christopher names a fellow nite intellect. Were Christopher to become omniscient, then that would be another matter. So: the intensionality of this epistemic property seems, in principle, subject to change. I suggest that Kant held a view like this about spatio-temporal properties. We might compare appearances to appearances. This is one set of circumstances. When we do, spatio-temporal properties are extensional, t to distinguish objects numerically. But we might also compare appearances to things as they are in themselves. This is another set of circumstances. When we do, spatio-temporal properties are intensional, unt to distinguish objects numerically. One of the insights of methodological readings is that considering appearances and considering things in themselves is a matter of considering things (full stop) as they appear and as they are in themselves, respectively. I wish to take over this insight. I suggest that we compare appearances to appearances in just those cases in which we are considering objects exclusively as they appear. We compare things in themselves to things in themselves in just those cases in which we are considering objects exclusively as they are in themselves. It is only in contexts in which we consider objects from both perspectives that spatio-temporal properties become intensional. This proposal adds nothing to the reading unless and until we answer some questions. They include:
(i) What is it to consider an object as it is in itself? (ii) What is it to consider an object as it appears? (iii) Why should these ways of considering objects affect the extensionality/intensionality of spatio-temporal properties?
In the next section of my paper, I begin to answer these questions directly. In particular, I will attempt to answer (i) and (iii). A proper answer to (ii) must await a more extensive treatment in section 7.
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5 . t h e way t h at w e c o n s i d e r objects and intensionality

(i) What is it to consider an object as it is in itself? This is a controversial question. I have already mentioned how Allison understands what it means to consider an object as it is in itself. It is to consider an object in abstraction from properties the sensible representation of which is a precondition for experiencing objects at all.39 Another way we might understand what it means to consider an object as it is in itself is that it is to attend only to an objects intrinsic nature.40 Yet one more waywhich I endorseis the perhaps old-fashioned view that to consider an object as it is in itself is to consider it as it is, however it is, regardless of how it appears to us. This analysis leaves open that such a nature might consist, in part, in relational properties. It leaves open that this nature might, partly or fully, appear to us.41 What it rules out is that such a nature includes properties that human beings represent the object to have that it does not, in fact, have. Consider this analogy. Some philosophers have wondered, despite how we experience the world, whether mind-independent reality is actually colored. These philosophers are, when they take up this issue, considering how things are as they are in themselves. Of course, if these philosophers think that things really do have properties like length and motion, Kant will claim that they are wrong about that. It does not follow, however, that they are not considering things as they are in themselves. The lack of sophistication of this proposal is a powerful reason to accept it. Kant does not introduce the concept of a thing in itself with any elaboration, which one might expect him to do if he had the rather specialized conceptions that I mentioned previously in mind.42 He does not introduce it as what remains in our representation of a thing once we abstract from the sensible features that we must represent the thing to have in order to experience it at all. He does not introduce it as a thing in abstraction from its relational or non-intrinsic properties. A thing considered as it is in itself is a notion that readers are supposed to be able to grasp with a modicum of philosophical background.43 If I am correct about what it is to consider an object as it is in itself, then it is at least very natural to answer the question of (ii) what it is to consider an object as it appears as follows: it is to consider an object exclusively as it presents itself to one in experience. This is what I have been suggesting since section 2. This proposal, it
Some have found it mysterious why it would be signicant to take up such a perspective; e.g. see Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 338; Debating Allison, 14. 40 Langton, Kantian Humility, ch. 2; Allais, Kants One World, 67782; and Intrinsic Natures, 158, 166. It is also controversial what an objects intrinsic nature is. For Langton, it can be constituted only of monadic properties. Others disagree (e.g. Allais, Intrinsic Natures, 14958; Bryan Hall, Appearances and the Problem, 46, 47). For discussion, see Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 15055; Ameriks, Kant and Short Arguments, 14857; Langton, Kants Phenomena, esp. 17275; and Dennis Schulting, Kants Idealism: the Current Debate, 2123. 41 Thus, it is not a matter of denition or stipulation that the objects of experience are not things in themselves. 42 Kant begins to talk of things in themselves at Bxx and A26/B42. 43 Kants own comparison of transcendental idealism to the long-acknowledged status of secondary qualities is apt (Prol, 4:289). Mind-independent things are not, it was commonly believed, colored, warm, sweet, etc., even if they are represented that way. To consider something as it is in itself is to consider it as it really is, whether it appears that way or not.
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will turn out, cannot be correct. But I want to pass over this concern until section 7, since I will be in a better position to address it after I have developed more of the reading that I am advocating. For the remainder of this section, I want to focus on (iii) why it should be that considering objects merely as they appear to us should allow spatio-temporal properties to be extensional, whereas when we consider objects both as they are in themselves and as they appear to us, spatio-temporal properties should be intensional. My response is that this kind of context-sensitivity should be seen as part of a wider phenomenon, and I return to the examples that I introduced in section 3. On the analysis that I promoted there, being bent and having-own-to-Aruba are in these cases intensional properties. Yet plainly this had better not be a general truth. It seems perfectly legitimate in most cases to distinguish objects numerically by way of these features. Consideration of the earlier examples suggests a principled way to determine when the properties will be extensional or intensional. When I consider objects only as they really are, being bent and having-own-to-Aruba are extensional properties. If stick A is, really, bent and stick B is, really, not, then A and B are distinct objects. It also seems right that when I consider objects solely as they appear, being bent is an extensional property. If stick A appears bent and (at the same time) stick B does not, then in this experience, these are distinct objects (e.g. the person describing his phenomenology would be right to say that there are two objects, not one). Likewise, if Susan, really, went to Aruba and you, really, did not, then you and Susan are distinct individuals. And if you, in my dream, went to Aruba whereas Frank, in my dream, did not, then, in my dream, you and Frank are distinct individuals (distinct characters, as it were, in this story). It is only when we compare an object considered in one context with an object considered in another context that these properties are intensional. Since I have modeled transcendental idealism on the foregoing analysis of the bent-stick and dream cases, we now have an answer to (iii) why it should be that considering objects merely as they appear to us should allow spatio-temporal properties to be extensional whereas when we consider objects both as they are in themselves and as they appear to us spatio-temporal properties should be intensional. Spatio-temporal properties come to have the status that the bent-ness does in the one case and that ying to Aruba does in the other. We represent things to have spatio-temporal features and to be in space and time when, in fact, things as they really are lack these features and are not in space and time. Still, they do appear this way; and it is objects as they appear that are the referents of most of our judgments. As I have noted, my earlier gloss of what it means to consider an object as it appears needs further scrutiny. This will be the subject of section 7. But before turning to that, I must address a lacuna.
6. the referents of our intuitions

The reading that I have advanced explains why, for Kant, most of our judgments about the worldat least those that attribute spatio-temporal properties to
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itcome out (all other things being equal) true. Granted, things as they are in themselves are neither spatial nor temporal. But remember, on this reading, when we consider a thing as it appears, what makes our judgments about it true or false is not the object without qualication (just as the property of being-known-byChristopher-to-have-written-Huckleberry-Finn is not had by some object without qualication). It is the object along with, and only with, the properties that it appears to have. That is why it is truly judged that, say, my cup of coffee is four inches tall. Now, the lacuna is that I have explained how we avoid misrepresentation in our judgments without having said anything about how it is avoided in our intuitions. We do not avoid the pitfalls of the distortion reading if our sensible representations are massively misrepresentative of our world, regardless of how faithful our judgments are. I propose the following. Concepts and judgments, Kant says, can be directed at both the world as it appears and the world as it is in itself. This is accomplished either by considering the world as it appears or as it is in itself, respectively. But there is no reason to think that intuitions have the same exibility. Indeed, I suggest that Kant holds that our intuitions invariably refer to the world as it appears:
We have . . . wanted to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance. (A42/B59) [T]he thing in itself . . . is . . . never asked after in experience. (A30/B45) [T]he principle remains xed, that our sensory representation is by no means a representation of things in themselves, but only of the way in which they appear to us. (Prol, 4:287; see also Bxxvi, Prol, 4:290)
We can map out the referential exibility of our judgments, and the inexibility of our intuitions, in the following gure:
The reading of transcendental idealism that I am advocating is thus importantly like the two-worlds reading. There is no massive misrepresentation on the two-worlds reading because on it, the objects of our intuitions are not things in themselves but rather ideal objects that are genuinely spatio-temporal. So, too, there is no distortion on the reading that I am urging because the referents of our intuitions are things as they appear, not things as they are in themselves. But the analysis also has something importantly in common with the distortion reading. On the distortion reading, we introduce spatial and temporal content into our experiences of mind-independent things. This is not true of either two-worlds
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readings or methodological readings, but it is a feature of mine.44 The crucial difference between the distortion reading and my own is that on the latter, the mind-independent things that are the objects of experience are not simply mindindependent things. They are mind-independent things with, and only with, the features that they appear to have.45 This is a good place to take stock. I have urged a reading of transcendental idealism modeled on an account of certain sorts of judgments about illusions and dreams. Things as they really are, independently of us, are neither spatial nor temporal. We can target our judgments on to things as they really areby considering them as they are in themselvesand in so doing judge truly that they are neither spatial nor temporal. But we can also target our judgments on to things as they appear to usby considering how they appear to usand in so doing judge truly that they are spatial and temporal, since that is indeed how they appear (just as I can target my judgment on to you as you appear in my dream and say truly, in this context, that you went to Aruba). A concern here is that things as they appear cannot be identical to any things as they are in themselves since these things have different properties. But that will not follow if such properties, i.e. spatial and temporal properties, are intensional in those contexts in which we are comparing appearances with things in themselves (just as, on one plausible model, you as you are in my dream are numerically identical to you as your really are, despite that in the dream you went to Aruba, whereas in reality you did not). I have suggested that our intuitions invariably refer to things with, and only with, their apparent properties, and this is the force of Kants claiming that the objects of possible experience are appearances only, not things as they are in themselves. That space and time are mere forms of appearances amounts to the conjunctive claim that the representation of space and time in experience makes all experience possible while space and time themselves have the status of mere intentional objects.
7. appearances
The reading that I have presented in sections 26 contains the main innovations that an account of transcendental idealism requires. But it will not do as it stands. The problem can be put thus: whereas with the distortion reading all experience
I do not mean to suggest that advocates of methodological readings deny that we introduce spatio-temporal content into our experiences. It is just that, when they acknowledge this, it is no longer clear how they avoid advocating the distortion reading (see e.g. Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 14650). 45 Besides avoiding the pitfalls of the distortion reading, the two-worlds reading, and the methodological reading, this reading also makes excellent sense of one of Kants remarks in response to the worry that transcendental idealism implies large-scale illusion:
44
What is not to be encountered in the object in itself at all, but is always to be encountered in its relation to the subject [im Verhltnisse desselben zum Subject] and is inseparable from the representation of the object, is appearance, and thus the predicates of space and of time are rightly attributed to the objects of the senses as such [den Gegenstnden der Sinne als solchen], and there is no illusion in this. (B70n; my emphases) The objects of the senses as such, I suggest, are just mind-independent things as they appear to human beings: in [their] relation to the subject.
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seems illusory, a difculty for my reading seems to be that no experience can be illusory. Any object will appear to have the features that it appears to have. So on my accounting of transcendental idealism, any object as it appearsjust as it presents itself to us in experience, as I have been articulating itwill have the features that it appears to have, making illusion impossible. This is a bad result. It calls for revisions to the interpretation. The rst thing to note here is that, fortunately, Kant makes the distinction that my account requires. Appearances come in two kinds. There are appearances in the empirical sense of the expression. Additionally, there are appearances in the transcendental sense of the expression.46 The things as they appear that constitute, for Kant, empirical reality are appearances in the transcendental sense: henceforth, appearancest. The intentional objects of our intuitions or of our intuitive representation[s] (B278) are appearances in the empirical sense: henceforth, appearancese. The notion of an appearancee embodies a perfectly ordinary sense of the word appearance. Mere appearancese include the contents of our hallucinations, dreams, and what is illusory in the illusions that we suffer. These objects are empirically ideal. But very often, appearancese are appearancest. These are just cases of veridical experiences, and the objects of these intuitions are empirically real.47 Yet as it stands, the transcendental/empirical distinction yields no more than labels. We must know more about what it means to say that some object, as it appears in the transcendental sense (i.e. appearst), has some property. In fact, the difculty is not merely the want of explanation. For the distinction between things as they appeart and things as they appeare seems to be a distinction in kind. I have accounted for transcendental idealism appealing only to a perfectly ordinary sense of the word appear. If Kant typically uses the word appear in a special sense (appeart), one that is very different from the ordinary sense of appear, then this threatens to undercut the rationale that I offered in sections 26. I was talking about things as they appeare. But perhaps appearancest have nothing to do with appearancese? One thing that seems reasonably clear about appearancest is that they result from a combination of the way that things are in themselves and the way that we are in ourselves.48 The latter is obvious: Kant thinks that we put into (Bxviii; A125) the objects of experience certain crucial features. But the former is also obvious: otherwise, the human mind would be wholly responsible for the content of its exA4546/B6263; FM, 20:269; see also A2930/B45, A373. While it is customary to distinguish these two senses of appearance, the way that I distinguish them runs counter to standard practice. According to most, appearancese are literally within the mind, whereas appearancest are understood to be ideal in some other way, depending on the account of transcendental idealism that one adopts (e.g. Bird, Kants Theory of Knowledge: An Outline of One Central Argument, 4447 (esp. 4546); Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism, 68; Kants Transcendental Idealism, rev. ed., 26; Ameriks, Kants Idealism on a Moderate Interpretation, 33; see also Allais, Kants One World, 665). So understood, there is no way for some appearancese to be appearancest, as I have proposed. As I understand mere appearancese, it is not that they exist in the mind: rather, they do not exist (at least, not where they are represented as existing). 48 Langtons interpretation (Kantian Humility) runs against this remark, but hers is a minority and controversial position; see Allais, Intrinsic Natures, 158.
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periences, and Kant holds that it contributes only formal content. Of course, how things and human beings as they are in themselves together yield appearancest is a mystery: if we could understand, we would have substantive knowledge of things as they are in themselves. Kant disavows such knowledge. But there is no reason to doubt that however it works, it might not always work properly. Things may well appeare in a way they should not. This observation suggests an answer to the present difculty. Perhaps appearancest are just things as they should appeare to us. There is a correct way that objects appeare as a result of how things are in themselves and how we are in ourselves. Objects, appearinge that way, constitute empirical reality. Where they do not so appeare, we have illusion, hallucination, and the like: mere appearancese. The virtue of this proposal is not only that it is a substantive account of the distinction between Kants two senses of appearance but also that these two kinds of appearances are straightforwardly related to each other. Fundamentally, transcendental idealism uses only the entirely familiar notion of appearing: appearinge. When Kant typically writes of appearancesappearancestwhat he has in mind are objects as they ought to appeare to us. On analysis, there is ultimately no idiosyncratic use of appearsjust the familiar use plus some normative vocabulary.49 The upshot, then, is this. When I hallucinate a pink elephant or suffer the illusion that the stick is bent, there is the disjoint that constitutes misrepresentation. This is because how the world does appeare here is not in such cases how it should appeare. Contrary to what I provisionally proposed in section 2, the targets of our intuitions are not things as they appeare to us but things as they ought to appeare to us: things with, and only with, the features that they ought to appeare to have. This is the amendment that my analysis required. (Henceforth I drop the subscripts unless disambiguation is necessary.) I acknowledge that in claiming that appearancest are things as they should appeare to us, I am going somewhat beyond what Kant says explicitly in his texts. My position is that this proposal is the best way to harmonize Kants other, explicit commitments. Still, one nds whiffs of the proposal in some of what Kant writes. For it is an occasional theme in Kants work to construe the objective validity of our cognitions as their agreement with everyone elses.50 Since Kant would surely allow that a cognition can be objectively valid without it being the case that everyone else would, in fact, agree with it (as Locke pointed out, one can always nd a child or an idiot who will not assent to the most obvious truths51), it is natural to construe Kant as claiming that the objective validity of our cognitions consists in their agreement with what all of us should accept.
A further virtue of this proposal is that appearancest need not actually appeare to anyone. This is indeed Kants position (e.g. A49293/B521) and a fact with which some readings of transcendental idealism have difculty. 50 Objective validity and necessary universal validity (for everyone) are . . . interchangeable concepts (Prol, 4:298). I do not want to make too much of this passage, since it is taken from Kants highly controversial discussion of judgments of experience and judgments of perception. Here I mean simply to point out a tendency in Kants thought which, suitably channeled, comports with the analysis of transcendental idealism that I am recommending. See also B140. 51 Essay, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 5, 49.
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One passage is to my mind particularly suggestive. Here Kant is discussing the empirical sense of the appearance/thing-in-itself distinctionthat is, the distinction between mere appearancese and appearancest:
Thus, we would certainly call a rainbow a mere appearance in a sun-shower, but would call this rain the thing in itself, and this is correct, as long as we understand the latter concept in a merely physical sense, as that which in universal experience and all different positions relative to the senses is always determined thus and not otherwise in intuition. But if we consider this empirical object in general and, without turning to its agreement with every human sense, ask whether it (not the raindrops, since these, as appearances, are already empirical objects) represents an object in itself, then the question of the relation of the representation to the object is transcendental, and not only these drops are mere appearances, but even their round form, indeed even the space through which they fall are nothing in themselves, but only mere modications or foundations of our sensible intuition. (A4546/B63)
How should we understand this passage? One might read Kants claim that an empirical thing and all the properties (e.g. round form) it truly has is just the object as it is always determined thus and not otherwise in intuition or as it agree[s] with every human sense as the proposal that appearancest are things as they would appear to anyone appropriately situated. For example, I am currently experiencing my cup of coffee. You are not. Yet (presumably) you (and anyone else) would if your eyes were open and you occupied the location in space that I currently do. Hence (the suggestion goes) the appearancee of the cup is also an appearancet. The members of the human species are, however, idiosyncratic, and looking at a rainbow, some of them might see a shade of orange where others see a shade of red.52 Color features, then, might have the status of being mere appearancese and not also appearancest. I do not think, however, that this is the right way to understand Kants remarks. Suppose that you are looking at some raindrops up close and their round form appears to you. Who is to say that if I were in exactly the same position their shape would likewise appear round to me? Maybe, because of a problem with my eyes, they would appear oval. This would imply that roundness is not an empirically real property for Kant. And that is the wrong result. Fixes for this proposal seem, moreover, unpromising. It cannot be that Kant is asking us to suppose that the counterfactual situation is one in which the persons have exactly the same cognitive constitution as you: trivially, they would then see everything exactly as you do.53 So we will feel some pressure to introduce the idea of idealized circumstances: what will be an appearancetthat is, empirically realis what would appear to anyone in the same circumstance under ideal conditions. But what are these? One now seems pressured toward gesturing at properly working eyes, properly working ears, etc. And at this point it is beginning to look like how things would appear to one is doing no philosophical work. What is doing the work is the properly bit. And this is just my own proposal. Appearancest are how objects should appeare to us.
See also KU, 5:291. Here I ignore contemporary concerns about qualia, inverted spectra, etc. Few would suggest that qualia have a hand in illusion, and if they did have such a hand these would be a very restricted class of illusions.
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I have so far construed appearances entirely phenomenologically. Clearly Kants conception of an appearancet is, in part, phenomenological.54 But it cannot be this alone.55 Consider: (a) for normally-sighted persons, objects appear, and surely (in some sense) should appear, colored. Accordingly, by my account, empirically real objects are colored. And while this may be a happy philosophical result, Kant did not accept it: he took color properties to be subjective (e.g. A28, A29/B45). Or consider (b) the round penny that looks elliptical from most angles. For normallysighted persons, the penny should look elliptical from these angles. But on my account, this would imply that the penny really has all of these different (indeed, incompatible) elliptical shapes it appears to have in these circumstances. Or let us return to (c) the example of the bent stick. Plainly for normally-sighted persons the stick should appear bent; something would be going wrong if it appeared to be straight. But by my lights, this seems to imply that the stick (as it appears) is actually bent. These examples help to clarify what I have in mind by talking about objects as they should appear. To borrow from Wilfrid Sellars, the image that is how objects should appear is the scientic image. It is objects as they should appear to the human species, not to any given individual; it is a picture of the world that, we hope, our best scientic practices are bringing to light.56 Thus on my view, (a') we are not obliged to hold that objects are really colored, at least if it turns out, as Kant thought it had, that color representation is an idiosyncratic way in which we represent the world. And (b') we are not obliged to hold that pennies are really elliptical. Although it would be exaggeration to claim that the elliptical appearance of the penny is illusory, Kant would, I think, say that such an experience does indeed misrepresent how the penny is. (c') Likewise, nally, for the bent-stick illusion. Granted, there is a legitimate sense in which the stick should appear bent. But this sense is purely phenomenological. It does not pick out the picture of the world that science is trying to uncover. I am now also in a position to address an objection to how I understood what it is to consider an object as it is in itself. It is crucial to any interpretation of Kant that we not construe considering things as they are in themselves in such a way that people do this very often. I urged in section 5 that to consider things as they are in themselves is to consider them free of any apparent properties that we represent them to have but which they do not, independently of how we represent them, have. The trouble is that people do seem to do this fairly often: for instance, when they wonder whether up ahead on the roads hot asphalt there is a true puddle or just a mirage of one. In such a case, by my lights, the target of a persons judg-
For example, when in the Aesthetic Kant argues that space is ideal (and thus that all spatial appearances are ideal), he asks us to try to imagine experiencing an object distinct from us without experiencing the object as in space. One can never represent that there is no space, though one can very well think that there are no objects to be encountered in it (A24/B39). 55 I was moved to write this and the following paragraph as a consequence of feedback that I received from Christina Behme and other participants at the 2010 meeting of the Atlantic Canada Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy. 56 Sellars, Philosophy and the Scientic Image of Man; see also Langton, Kantian Humility, 14247. (I do not mean to suggest that Sellarss manifest image is simply how things seem phenomenologically.)
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ments about the road would seem to be a thing as it is in itself. Were he then to judge that the road is really wet, this would be necessarily false: the road, as it is in itself, is not wet. Only spatial things, after all, can get wet. I can now respond to this objection as follows. In fact, for Kant, if we are trying to consider an object absolutely free of properties we may be merely representing it to have, then the referent of any judgment about that object will be that object as it is in itself. In such circumstances, to judge of it that it is, for example, spatial will be to judge falsely. But we really do not consider an object free of properties that we only represent it to have when, for instance, we wonder about whether we are suffering an illusion. Rather, in such cases, we are wondering whether the object is appearing to us as it ought to appear to us.
8. the problem of affection, freedom

I have argued that consideration of three major readings of transcendental idealism yields three criteria that an account of transcendental idealism ought to satisfy: the no-illusion criterion, the identity criterion, and the ideality criterion. The account that I have presented seems to satisfy all three. Of course, there are other things that an account of transcendental idealism ought to do. I cannot discuss all of them here. But I think that it is important to say at least a few words about what the account that I have offered suggests (to me, at least) about two perennial sticking points in scholarship on transcendental idealism: the problem of affection and Kants conception of freedom. These remarks will be a little sketchy.
8.1. The Problem of Affection

The problem of affection is the difculty of explaining how Kant thinks that we relate passively to objects in experience. How, for instance, are we to understand Kants gloss of the sensibility as our capacity (receptivity) to acquire representations through the way in which we are affected [afcirt] by objects (A19/B33)? We appear to have three options:57
(1) The affecting object is a thing as it is in itself. (2) The affecting object is an appearance. (3) Both things as they are in themselves and appearances affect us.
There is overwhelming textual evidence in favor of (1).58 The evidence is nearly as strong, although often less explicit, in favor of (2).59 So it seems that we must accept (3). If these affections are distinct, we have a theory of double-affection.60
57 Derived from Hans Vaihingers presentation of the difculty in Commentar, 2:53; see also Jacobi, Werke, 2:30110; Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 163; Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism, rev. ed., 6473; Kenneth R. Westphal, Kants Transcendental Proof of Realism, 3841; and Claude Pich, Kant and the Problem of Affection. 58 A190/B235, A278/B334, A288/B344, A358, A37980, A387, A39091, A49496/B52224, A53839/B56667; Prol, 4:28889, 290, 31415, 318, 347; Gr, 4:451, 453; and UE, 8:207, 215. Passages according to which a thing as it is in itself is a cause of, specically, action in the phenomenal world include A53637/B56465, A538/B566, A544/B572, and A54546/B57374. 59 A28, B208, A213/B260; and Prol, 4:290. 60 So named by Erich Adickes, Kants Lehre.
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Yet so understood, (3) may be the most problematic response to the difculty. The problem with (1), it has seemed to some, is that if Kant holds it, he is committed to having substantive knowledge of things in themselves, knowledge that would involve applying the category of causation beyond the bounds of possible experience. The difculty with (2), it has been thought, is that appearances are mere representations and thus mere representations would have to give rise, impossibly, to themselves. (3), understood as the theory of double-affection, inherits the rst problem and also faces a unique difculty. For in the theory of double-affection we seem to have a two-worlds reading in its most ontologically extravagant form. The picture looks something like this: There are selvestranscendental egosthat are, transcendentally, affected from without by things in themselves. This gives rise to a realm within the transcendental ego of spatio-temporal objectsappearances not least of which is an empirical ego that corresponds to the transcendental ego. Spatio-temporal objects affect this empirical ego to produce within it sensations and the like, and these occupy an empirically ideal realm. Whole worlds within individual minds, egos within egos: one struggles to recall what was so bad about transcendental realism. Still, the reading that I have developed provides aid and comfort to the theory of double-affectionproperly understood. I explain below. But rst I want to answer the objection to (1) and explain how my reading avoids the objection to (2). A partial response to the objection to (1) is straightforward. As many have noted, it is no violation of Critical principles to hold that we can apply unschematized categories to things as they are in themselves.61 Kant explicitly allows it.62 If he did not, we would not even be able to think about things as they are in themselves. When Kant prohibits the application of categories beyond the bounds of possible experience (e.g. B14648), his point is that we cannot hope to have genuine cognition of things this way. Admittedly, it is hard to gloss Kants commitment to transcendental affection as mere thought about things in themselves.63 But it seems that, as Andrew Chignell has recently argued, the thought/cognition distinction is but one that Kant ultimately recognizes among our epistemic attitudes. Chignell claims that among mere thoughts (Gedanken) there are, for Kant, a variety of attitudes,64 one of which Chignell labels theoretical belief (Glaube) or acceptance. Characteristic of theoretical belief is that it is motivated by the end of understanding the world;
61 Robert Merrihew Adams, Things in Themselves, 8067; Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, 281; Langton, Kantian Humility, 50; Nicholas Rescher, Kant and the Reach of Reason, 27; Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism, rev. ed., 56; Westphal, Kants Transcendental Proof of Realism, 4752; Desmond Hogan, Noumenal Affection, 5034. 62 A88/B120, B166n, B3067, and A25354/B309. 63 While he does not favor construing transcendental affection as arbitrary speculation, Hall does seem to understand our thought of this affection as a mere representational constraint. Accordingly, there is no good reason to accept transcendental affection, but we cannot help but represent appearances (appearancest) as having a conceptual or logical ground (Appearances and the Problem, 5558). Rescher insists that, for Kant, we do have warrant for postulating things in themselves that affect us (Kant and the Reach of Reason, 1220, 2735). But the warrant seems to be, as with Hall, a mere representational requirement or a compulsion of reason: we cannot help but represent things in themselves grounding appearances. This seems short of a true justication for postulating noumenal affection. 64 I should note that in Belief in Kant, the distinction between thought and cognition arises only incidentally. While Chignell does endorse the idea that commitment to transcendental affection is thought and not cognition (351), it is far more important to his designs to offer up commitment
609
that without having this belief, realizing this end would be impossible; that there are no strong objective grounds either to endorse or reject the proposition believed (such that the proposition or its negation might, e.g. count as knowledge [Wissen]); but that the grounds there are for accepting this proposition support it at least as well as any competitor.65 Chignell proposes that theoretical belief in things in themselves that ground appearances is necessary in order to cognize appearancesthis is the end that this belief servesbut it is not his aim to explain why Kant thinks that this is necessary.66 I am agnostic about whether Kant thinks that belief in this sort of grounding serves some end. But my own speculationand I stress that this is conjectureis that Kant would regard the real (not merely intentional) inuence of mind-independent reality on the mind as a necessary condition on our being able to refer to, and know about, mind-independent reality.67 Kant is committed to the latter. Granted, this knowledge is of objects as they appear to us. But it is of mind-independent objects, nonetheless. This presupposes that we manage to relate or refer to these objects. Why would things as they are in themselves need to exist and also to ground appearances through affection in order for us to refer to mind-independent reality? It may help to ask: what are the alternatives? It cannot be that our representations bring their objects into existence: this would make the human being into an intellectus archetypus, a divine being (Br, 10:130). Perhaps instead one should accept the theories of pre-established harmony or occasionalism. But pre-established harmony can explain only a correlation between the minds representations and the world, not how the former come to be about the latter68unless one suggests that God simply makes it so. In Kants eyes this, along with the theory of occasionalism, both is a deus ex machina (Br, 10:131) and uncritically relies on the goodness of a divine entity.69 This leaves the doctrine of real inuence.70 And Kant did seem to take for granted that we could understand how our representations are about reality if reality were responsible for their production.71 If this argument from elimination
to transcendental affection as an instance of theoretical belief (Glaube), in contrast to pragmatic or moral belief. These states are short of knowledge (Wissen) and different from other categories of assent (Fhrwahrhalten) that Chignell documents. Chignell does not have a place for thought or cognition in this hierarchy. 65 For more, see esp. Chignell, Belief in Kant, 350. 66 Chignell, Belief in Kant, 351; see also 35760. Chignell also suggests that for Kant various regulative principles have the status of theoretical beliefs (35153). 67 Recently, Hogan has argued that at least a rationale for Kants acceptance of noumenal affection is Kants desire to preserve a libertarian conception of freedom (Noumenal Affection). 68 See B16768, where Kant seems to claim that a pre-established harmony theory (a kind of preformation-system of pure reason) would be unable to explain how the concept of cause refers to anything: it would explain only the thesis that I am so constituted that I cannot think of this representation [of the cause and the effect] otherwise than as so connected, not that I cognize that the effect is combined with the cause in the object (Kant actually claims that one would be unable to say [sagen] the latter). 69 Prol, 4:319n; see also 4:282 and R4473, 17:564 (the last of which I was directed to by Hogan, Noumenal Affection, 519n47). 70 Gardner also uses an argument from elimination to justify transcendental affection (Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, 28788). 71 E.g. Br, 10:130, A92/B12425. See also Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 33. As Van Cleve notes (267n67), many contemporary philosophers share this intuition. See Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, ch. 1; Jerry A. Fodor, A Theory of Content, chs. 3 and 4; see also Fred I. Dretske, The Intentionality of Cognitive States.
610
represents Kants rationale for transcendental affection, then his commitment to it may fall short of theoretical cognition. But it is not idle speculation, either, and deserves something like the label [t]heoretical [b]elief that Chignell assigns it. The objection to the suggestion that (2) appearances affect us seems most easily understood if the target for criticism is also a two-worlds reading of transcendental idealism. I have already discussed reasons to avoid that reading. Does the reading that I have advanced make better sense of appearancesi.e. appearancestaffecting us? That reading suggests that appearancest affecting us, and giving rise to intuitions of the world, is a merely intentional feature of reality: how things should appear to us. Kant is thus not committed to the position that items in some ideal realm somehow bring themselves into existence. Rather, his commitment to empirical affection is a commitment to the position that it should appear to us that things that exist independently of us cause our perceptions of them. I claim that a double-affection theory is correct. But would it not be more elegant to identify these (1) transcendental and (2) empirical affectionsfor example, to countenance just the empirical affection and treat Kants talk of transcendental affection as talk of empirical affection considered at some higher level of abstraction?72 I do not think that this can be right. It is part of Kants theory of cognition that in some sense we impose not only spatiality and temporality on to the objects of experience, but also various categorial features, such as causation. The former is a lesson from the Transcendental Aesthetic; the latter is a lesson from the Transcendental Deduction. On this analysis, transcendental affection just is empirical affection, considered as it is in itself. But since transcendental affection exists regardless of what impositions for which the mind is responsible, the implication of this reading is that empirical affection is not the result of our introducing causality into the content of our experiences. This is not Kants position. If what I have argued above is right, then we do not have the form of doubleaffection reading according to which there are multiple realms of being and multiple selves paired with each cognizer. Rather, the view is that (1) things as they are in themselves really do affect us, although how we cannot know, and that (2) that very same reality should appear to affect us in space and time.
8.2. Freedom
Kant thinks that only by accepting transcendental idealism can we make sense of human freedom. He took freedom and the necessity, or causal determinism, of nature to be incompatible with each other.73 Yet we might have both if we are free as we are in ourselves, not as we appear, and if determinism applies only to appearances, not to things as they are in themselves.74 This position has been understood in various ways. On the distortion reading, Kant overcomes the seeming tension between freedom and determinism by mak72 Prauss, Kant und das Problem, 192204; and see Pich, Kant and the Problem of Affection, 288. Gardner briey mentions this position (Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, 293). 73 Bxxviixxix; Prol, 4:34347; and KpV, 5:9497. 74 Bxxviixxix, A543/B571, A55152/B57980, A55354/B58182; and Gr, 4:45158. Of course, the outright commitment to human freedom occurs in Kants practical work, not in his theoretical work (A55758/B58586).
611
ing determinism, along with space and time, illusory. We really are free, even if we appear determined.75 The two-worlds reading can deny that there is a single self that is subject to incompatible properties. The noumenal subject (the subject as she is in herself) is distinct from the empirical subject (the subject as she appears), making it possible for the former to be free even if the latter cannot be.76 Finally, it is of a piece with methodological readings to explain our ascriptions of freedom and determinism as being legitimate only relative to one of two distinct points of view or standpointsspecically, the practical and theoretical. Relative to the former, we are free and not determined; relative to the latter, we are determined and not free.77 Each of these analyses faces important difculties. Kants remarks about determinism in no way suggest that he thinks it illusory. The correctness of the principle of the thoroughgoing connection of all occurrences in the world of sense according to invariable natural laws is already conrmed as a principle of the transcendental analytic and will suffer [no] violation [keinen Abbruch].78 The suggestion that there are two selves has textual as well as philosophical problems. The primary textual difculty is that Kant tells us that one and the same thing is free and yet . . . simultaneously subject to natural necessity.79 One philosophical difculty is that the spatio-temporal actions of a spatio-temporal and empirical self would be the ones presumably subject to moral evaluation, but this is precisely the self whose actions would not, on this reading, be free. The two-standpoint reading must convincingly explain how freedom can be, even if just for Kant, standpoint-relative rather than a perfectly objective, non-relative fact. While our
75 Wood does not commit to this but does claim that certain temporal notions such as moral striving and moral progress have, on Kants account, only gurative or allegorical and not literal truth (Kants Ethical Thought, 179; see also Kants Compatibilism, 9799). It must be said, however, that Wood elsewhere rejects the reading according to which the natural or empirical causes of actions, their causes in the world of appearance, are not real causes but only apparent causes (Kants Compatibilism, 87). 76 This may be Guyers view (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 33435, 399; Review of Kants Theory of Freedom, 104). 77 Onora ONeill, Constructions of Reason, ch. 4; Christine M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends, xxii, 185n10, 20305; Andrews Reath, Kants Critical Account of Freedom; Patrick Frierson, Two Standpoints; see also Allison, Kants Theory of Freedom, 4146. Two-standpoint interpretations of transcendental idealism approach the subject from Kants practical philosophy. The distinction between considering some thing or someone from a theoretical point of view and from a practical point of view is of course not the same distinction as that between considering something as it appears and as it is in itself, respectively. It is a nice question what the relationship between these two distinctions amounts to, and unfortunately I have no developed views on the matter. One is tempted to ask why taking on a practical point of view should imply or require considering things as they are independently of what properties we may be merely representing them to have. But perhaps this is the wrong question: why, after all, should one worry whether considering subjects practically leads to considering them otherwise than how they mind-independently are? Perhaps the right question is rather why considering things theoretically should imply or require considering them only as they appear. And in response to this question, it may be that Kant is taking for granted that in adopting the theoretical perspective, the only way we can achieve genuine theoretical cognition of objects is through considering them as they appear. We can have no cognition of things as they are in themselves. 78 A536/B564; see also Bxxviixxix, A534/B562, A540/B568, A54243/B57071, A54950/ B57778, and A798/B826. 79 Bxxvii; see also Prol, 4:344.
612
freedom or lack thereof may be salient only relative to some standpointwe may, e.g. be able to act only under the idea of freedom (Gr, 4:448)that by itself does not imply that our ascriptions of freedom and determinism are true only relative to some standpoint.80 The interpretation that I have advanced offers a way either to sidestep or to address the foregoing concerns. Persons, like other things, are not really in space or time and are not causally determined. That is to say: as they are in themselves, they are not causally determined, and thus they can be free. Persons, along with their actions, do, and should, appear to be determined, and thus this account can at rst seem like the distortion reading. But while the person as she is in herself and the person as she appears are not numerically distinctthis is not a two-worlds responsethey are different referents, and what is true of one need not be true of the other (in much the same way that what is true of Mark Twain may not be true of Samuel Clemens; for example, Christopher knows only the former to be the author of Huckleberry Finn). Thus, there is no misrepresentation of something that is free as determined and, consequently, as not free. This proposal is also distinct from traditional two-standpoint explanations, which tend to stress only the tasks or normse.g. guiding choice vs. explaining phenomenathat are relevant to each point of view in order to explain the legitimacy of ascribing freedom or the property of being determined to the objects under consideration. On the reading that I have proposed, the legitimacy of these ascriptions is, as on two-standpoint views, relative to the way that one considers the world. But unlike two-standpoint views, my analysis can allow that these ascriptions have a truth value and explain what makes them true (or false). The human as she appears really is, because she should appear, causally determined. Thus, when we consider her as she appears and ascribe to her the property of being causally determined, the claim is true. By contrast, there is at least the possibilityKant argues for no more in the Critique of Pure Reasonthat the human as she is in herself is free since, after all, spatiotemporality and causal determinism are only intentional features of the objects that we experience. Thus, when we consider her as she is in herself and ascribe to her the property of being free, the claim can be true, since the referent of the judgment is this person as she is in herself.
9. conclusion
Kant complained that his transcendental idealism had been misunderstood. The fault was largely Kants: he was not very clear about it. But we can understand the challenge that he faced. If the interpretation that I have advanced is correct, the view that he was trying to articulate t no standard model of the subjects cognitive relationship to the world. Little wonder so many divergent readings emerged. My proposal credits (many of) these interpretations with doing justice to genuine features of the doctrine. The challenge comes in reconciling these features. There is another possibility, of course: that Kant was pulled in different directions and
For discussion, see Eric Watkins, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality, 32223; and Frierson, Two Standpoints, 94102; see also Irwin, Morality and Personality, 3738; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 33738; and Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 8, 14650.
80
613
that transcendental idealism is a label for no single, consistent theory. Those of us who study Kant must gird ourselves for the possibility of this unhappy nal assessment. For now, however, I continue to be optimistic that we can avoid this result.81
bibliography and abbreviations

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My thanks to Lanier Anderson, Jake Beck, Sean Ebels-Duggan, Ray Elugardo, Jim Hawthorne, Martin Montminy, Kristi Olson, Charles Parsons, Alison Simmons, Bharath Vallabha, Kritika Yegnashankaran, and three anonymous referees with the Journal of the History of Philosophy for their helpful feedback to and constructive criticism of earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to express my gratitude to participants at the University of Oklahoma Department Colloquium series in 2007, participants at the Nth-Year Seminar at Harvard University in 2009, and participants at the 2010 meeting of the Atlantic Canada Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy for their helpful questions and comments.
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Pippin, Robert B. Kants Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. [Kants Theory of Form] Prauss, Gerold. Kant und das Problem der Dinge an Sich. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1974. [Kant und das Problem] Prichard, H. A. Kants Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Reath, Andrews. Kants Critical Account of Freedom. In A Companion to Kant, edited by Graham Bird, 27590. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Rescher, Nicholas. Kant and the Reach of Reason: Studies in Kants Theory of Rational Systematization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. [Kant and the Reach of Reason] Robinson, Hoke. Two Perspectives on Kants Appearances and Things in Themselves. Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (1994): 41141. [Two Perspectives] Roche, Andrew F. Allais on Transcendental Idealism. Kantian Review 16 (2011): 35174. Rosefeldt, Tobias. Dinge an sich und sekundre Qualitten. In Kant in der Gegenwart, edited by Jrgen Stolzenberg, 167209. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007. [Dinge an sich] . Review of Problems from Kant, by James Van Cleve, Possible Experience, by Arthur Collins, and Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves, by Rae Langton. European Journal of Philosophy 9 (2001): 26369. [Review of Problems from Kant] Schulting, Dennis. Kants Idealism: the Current Debate. In Schulting and Verburgt, Kants Idealism: New Interpretations of a Controversial Doctrine, 125. Schulting, Dennis, and Jacco Verburgt, eds. Kants Idealism: New Interpretations of a Controversial Doctrine. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. Sellars, Wilfrid. Philosophy and the Scientic Image of Man. In Science, Perception, and Reality, 140. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1991. Strawson, P. F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kants Critique of Pure Reason. London: Routledge, 1995. [Bounds of Sense] . Entity and Identity and Other Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. [Entity and Identity] Turbayne, Colin M. Kants Refutation of Dogmatic Idealism. The Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1955): 22544. [Kants Refutation] Vaihinger, Hans. Commentar zu Kants Kritik der Reinen Vernunft. 2 vols. 188192. Facscimilie. New York: Garland Publishing, 1976. [Commentar] Van Cleve, James. Problems from Kant. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Watkins, Eric. Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Westphal, Kenneth R. Kants Transcendental Proof of Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Wood, Allen W. Kant. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. . Kants Compatibilism. In Wood, Self and Nature in Kants Philosophy, 73101. . Kants Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. , ed. Self and Nature in Kants Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984.

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Transcendental Idealism: A Proposal

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Transcendental Idealism: A Proposal

* Andrew F. Roche is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Centre College.

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

1. three interpretations of and three criteria for transcendental idealism

transcendental idealism: a proposal

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

3. a defense of the readings model

Pereboom, Kant on Transcendental Freedom, 554.

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

4. addressing the identity criterion

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

A26364/B31920; see also A282/B338.

transcendental idealism: a proposal

5 . t h e way t h at w e c o n s i d e r objects and intensionality

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

6. the referents of our intuitions

transcendental idealism: a proposal

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

8. the problem of affection, freedom

8.1. The Problem of Affection

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

bibliography and abbreviations

journal of the history of philosophy 51:4 October 2013

transcendental idealism: a proposal

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