KENT BALDNER

CAUSALITY

A N D T H I N G S IN T H E M S E L V E S *

ABSYRACT. In this paper I examine Kant's use of causal language to characterize

things in themselves. Following Nicholas Rescher, I contend that Kant's use of such
causal language can only be understood by first coming to grips with the relation of
things in themselves to appearances. Unlike Rescher, however, I argue that things in
themselves and appearances are not numerically distinct entities. Rather, I claim that it
is things in themselves that we are intentionally related to in veridical experience,
though of course we know them only as they appear to us via our subjective experiential
faculties. In light of this account of the role of things in themselves in Kant's account of
experience, I argue that his use of causal locutions to describe things in themselves is
simply his attempt to capture the fact that as the objects that we are related to in
experience, the existence of things in themselves is presupposed by any account of the
nature of our experience of them.
1. T H E P R O B L E M

It is often observed that Kant has inconsistent things to say about

causality. 1 On the one hand, Kant is quite clear that as a "pure
concept of the understanding", the principle of causality is applicable
only within experience. Consider the following passages:
[I]f the pure concepts of the understanding are thought to go beyond the objects of
experience to things in themselves (noumena) they have no meaning
whatever . . . . B e y o n d . . . [reference to the sensible world] they are arbitrary combinations without objective reality . . . . and consequently the objects of these concepts
can be found nowhere but in a possible experience. 2
. . .

And with respect specifically to causality, we find:

If the reader will go back to our proof of the principle of causality.., he will observe
that we were able to prove it only of the objects of possible experience,... [that is] only
as a principle of the possibility of experience. [B289] 3

In these passages Kant plainly denies that we can apply the principle
of causality, or any of the pure concepts of the understanding, to
things in themselves. Beyond the realm of possible experience, these
concepts "have no meaning whatever".
On the other hand, Kant often speaks of things in themselves as the
"non-sensible" or "intelligible" causes of experience, in apparent
Synthese 77 (1988) 353-373.
1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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violation of his explicit denial of the meaningfulness of doing SO. 4

Furthermore, Kant in many places explicitly speaks of things in
themselves as "affecting" us (or our sensibility).5 But if we take the
above remarks seriously, these characterizations of things in themselves as the causes of experience or as affecting our sensibility must,
it seems, be rendered meaningless.
None of this is new, of course. Some previous interpreters, most
notably Peter Strawson in The Bounds of Sense, have been willing to
accept that Kant is just inconsistent in this regard and so that any talk
of things in themselves "affecting" us must be given up as impossible
given Kant's own account of meaningful discourse. 6 Others, such as
Nicholas Rescher in 'Noumenal Causality',7 have tried to take a more
sympathetic approach by offering an account of some legitimate claim
that Kant was trying to make by characterizing things in themselves as
the causes of experience. Rescher's strategy is to argue that in order to
make sense of these remarks, we must first come to a proper understanding of the correct relation of appearances to things in themselves.
Only then, Rescher argues, will we be able to adequately understand
what Kant actually meant.
I am in wholehearted agreement with Rescher that what is needed
in order to disentangle this mess is a clear understanding of Kant's talk
about appearances and things in themselves. More specifically, what
we need is an explanation of the role of things in themselves in Kant's
account of experience. Where I differ from Rescher, however, is in
exactly how the relation between these two notions is to be fleshed
out. Although he never says it in so many words, it is clear that
Rescher views appearances and things in themselves as numerically
distinct objects. Although we can, strictly speaking, know or
experience only appearances, we can and must at least think the
existence of things in themselves. This is warranted, according to
Rescher, by the Principle of Sufficient Reason. That is, since appearances are by nature conditioned entities, we are justified in
positing t h e existence of some admittedly unknown and unknowable
unconditioned entity on which they are "based" or "founded". While
such entities are not themselves experienceable, their existence is
demanded by a principle of reason. And it is this that Kant is claiming
when he speaks of things in themselves as the causes of appearances.
But since the principle of causality is just a specific instance or
application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason within the realm of

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experience, it is perhaps disappointing but not surprising that Kant

should have spoken of things in themselves as the causes of
experience, s
It is not my purpose in this paper to criticize Rescher's account of
the relation of things in themselves to appearances. Although ! have a
different account, I recognize that there is a certain structural
similarity between my views and Rescher's, and agree that this is the
right place to look in order to understand Kant's talk of things in
themselves as the causes of experience. I deny, however, that there is
any class of entities, ontologically distinct from things in themselves
and properly designated "appearances", that constitutes the sole proper objects of experience. On my account, the only objects of experience (indeed, the only objects at all) are independently real things in
themselves, and when Kant speaks of things in themselves as the
causes of experience, his point is only that the existence of such
objects is presupposed by any account of the nature of our experiences
of them. What I will argue, then, is that when Kant uses these
locutions to characterize things in themselves, his point is not that
there is any empirical relation between things in themselves and
experiences - as any truly causal relation would have to be on Kant's
account, but rather a transcendental relation, in that things in themselves are part of the conditions of the possibility of experience.
2.

THINGS

IN THEMSELVES
OF

AS THE

OBJECTS

EXPERIENCE

1 have suggested above that it is things in themselves and not

appearances which are the proper objects of experience. At first this
appears to contradict Kant's claims that we know or experience
appearances and not things in themselves. The apparent upshot of
these claims is that appearances and things in themselves are distinct
kinds of entities, and that it is appearances, and not things in themselves, that we stand in some kind of relation to in (veridical)
experience. 9 I think that this suggestion is flawed for at least two
reasons: first, there are a number of passages in which Kant is clear
that things in themselves and appearances are not, in fact, numerically
distinct, and so that there cannot be two kinds of entities involved in
experience; and second, if Kant is claiming that the sole proper objects
of experience are distinct from independently real things in them-

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selves, he may well be cutting himself off from any reason or

justification he has for claiming that there is any independent reality,
with the result that his transcendental idealism collapses into some
kind of Berkeleian idealism. On the account that I suggest, on the
other hand, it is independently real things in themselves that we
are related to in experience, although we can never know these things
as they really are, but only as they appear to us.

2.1 The Identity Passages

What I am suggesting is that appearances and things in themselves are
not numerically distinct entities; that in fact, there are no such things
as appearances at all, and so that it must be things in themselves that
we are immediately related to in experience. That is, I am denying that
appearances are any kind of intermediate entity that stand between
experiencers and things in themselves. Instead, I think that Kant's talk
about appearances - with its apparent reference to such entities - must
be understood as talk about how we experience things (i.e., things in
themselves) and not as talk about some unusual and ontologically
dependent object that we immediately and directly experience. Consequently, Kant's claim that we know only appearances, i.e., things as
they appear, should not be taken to imply that the objects that we are
related to in experience are something other than independently real
things in themselves, but simply that we can experience these things
only as they appear to us via our subjective experiential faculties.
I cannot in this context fully defend this reading of Kant, 1 but I call
attention to the following excerpts from the Critique as supporting my
contention that things in themselves and appearances should not be
taken to be numerically distinct objects:
[L]et us suppose that the distinction that our Critique has shown to be necessary,
between things as objects of experience and those same things as things in themselves
had not been made. In this c a s e , . . . I could not say of one and the same b e i n g . . , that its
will is free and y e t . . , is not free . . . . [O]ur C r i t i q u e . . . [teaches] that the object is to be
taken in a twofold sense, namely, as appearance and as thing in itself . . . . [Bxxvi-xxvii,
emphases mine]

Later we find:
. . this object as appearance is to be distinguished from itself as object in itself. [B69]

These passages, along with several others, 11 clearly suggest that things

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in themselves and appearances are the same objects, and so that there
is only one (kind of) object here and not two. But what can this be? If
we take Kant's commitment to an independent reality seriously and
want to avoid collapsing transcendental idealism into a Berkeleian
idealism, this can only be the thing in itself. The point that Kant is
trying to make by contrasting things in themselves with appearances is
that we must recognize that we do not experience these things as they
really are - that how things appear to us is not how they are
independently of being experienced. The distinction between appearances and things in themselves, then, is not an ontological distinction between two kinds of objects, but a conceptual or epistemological distinction between how things must appear to us - given
the contribution made by our perceptual faculties - and how these
same things may actually be apart from this contribution. We must
distinguish between ontological questions concerning the objects that
we experience and epistemological questions concerning how we
experience them.
I am therefore in agreement with interpreters such as Bird, Prauss,
and Allison that the distinction between appearances and things in
themselves is not a distinction between two different objects. I am less
happy, however, in characterizing my interpretation as a "double
aspect" interpretation, in part because of qualms regarding the
ontological status of such "aspects". But more importantly, I disagree
with all three regarding the status of the objects that we actually and
immediately experience. According to all three, 12 the objects that we
actually experience are empirical objects such as tables and chairs. But
of course, tables and chairs are spatio-temporal objects that conform
to the categories of the understanding. Indeed, it would not make
sense to characterize them as tables and chairs were this not so. In
short, they are appearances. On my account, on the other hand, it is
independently real things in themselves that we are directly related to
in experience. While we can know of these things that they appear to
us spatio-temporally, and as causally related, etc., we cannot know
anything determinate regarding what they are like in themselves. So
rather than claim that we know empirical objects that we can conceive
of as existing in themselves, I claim that what we know in experience
are things in themselves, while recognizing that we can never know of
these things how they may be in themselves, but only how they appear
t o US.

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2.2 Kant and Intentionality

I have argued elsewhere that we cannot adequately understand the
account of experience that Kant is offering without first coming to
grips with the family of problems that surrounds any attempt to
explain the intentionality of experience - the property that experience
has of being directional or representational, i.e., of being of or about
something. 13 A coherent account of these issues, I argue, is necessary
for understanding what Kant has to say about the relation of
experience to things in themselves, and also to understand why it
would be so problematic for Kant to claim that appearances are the
proper objects of experience. Consequently, a brief summary of these
issues is appropriate here.
There are at least two ways to account for the intentionality of
experience. The first (to be found implicitly in the views of Locke,
Berkeley, Hume, Meinong, and the Gurwitsch interpretation of Husserl) views the intentionality of experience as essentially relational;
that is, as essentially involving a relation to an intended object. Thus,
when I perceive a tree, think about the Eiffel Tower, or judge that
2 + 2 = 4, as well as when I hallucinate a green giant, think about
Pegasus, or judge that the square root of 64 is 7, there is, in each case,
something that I am intentionally related to via the experience.
Such an account of intentionality leads to interesting and problematic consequences. As the above examples illustrate, my perception of a tree and my hallucination of a green giant are each properly
described as involving a relation to an intended object. But if so, a
question will naturally arise as to the status of the objects that I am
related to in non-veridieal experiences. Obviously, the objects of such
experiences cannot be things such as tables and chairs, as these are
non-veridical experiences. The objects of such experiences will have
to be something else - perhaps ideas, intentionally inexistent objects,
non-existent objects, sense-data, appearances, or what have you.
The problematic consequences arise when we recognize that matters of theoretical simplicity strongly suggest that these objects should
also count as the objects of veridical experiences. It seems ad hoc to
suggest that while the intentionality of experience consists in a relation
to an intended object, the kinds of objects that we are related to in
veridical experiences are drastically different from the kinds of objects
that we are related to in non-veridical experiences. So once we allow

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that every intentional experience involves a relation to an intended

object, we will find a strong tendency to admit that every such
experience involves an intentional relation to one particular class of
entities - and a class of entities that is considerably different from what
we (we-theoretically) thought we were experiencing.
So what is the problem? The problem is that once we allow that we
are intentionally related only to some particular class of entities, we
will be hard pressed to defend the claim that there are any other sorts
of objects, or perhaps even the claim that we can meaningfully
suppose the existence of any other kind of object. At the very least,
we cut ourselves off from any direct epistemological justification for
claiming that such objects exist, in that we admit that we never
actually experience them. At worst, it may be that we cannot even
meaningfully suppose their existence. After all, supposition and imagination are themselves intentional states, and so, on this account,
relate us only to the entities we introduce as the immediate objects of
experience, thereby making even the thought of any other sort of
entity impossible. So if Kant's claim is that we are intentionally related
only to mind-dependent appearances and never to independently real
things in themselves, then the supposition that there is such an
independent reality seems doomed. A t best such a supposition is
ungrounded - at worst, contradictory. On this account, things in
themselves are either superfluous or impossible, and so it seems that
Kant's idealism is indeed Berkeleian after all.
But there is an alternate account of intentionality that does not lead
to these problematic results. This account of intentionality, found for
example in the Fe~llesdal interpretation of Husserl, TM does not place the
intentionality of experience in a relation to an intended object, but
rather in the fact that the experience harbors an "intentional content".
Such a content is what we share, for example, when we both think that
2 + 2 = 4 or judge that the square root of 64 is 7. It is important to
note that on this view the content is not what we are intentionally
related to in the experience. Rather, it is "that which determines what,
if anything, is intended. Some experiences - viz., non-veridical
experiences - simply will not b e intentionally related to anything, even
though they remain intentional experiences, in that they still harbor an
intentional content. What we have here is an account of the intentionality of experience that is akin to a Fregean account of
reference via sense. The content of an experience is not itself (nor-

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mally) what is intended in the experience, but instead that which

determines the intended object by prescribing conditions of satisfaction. Consequently, since the intentionality of experience is not
claimed to lie in a relation to an intended object, there is no need to
posit some new class of entities as the objects of non-veridical
experiences.
Now exactly what contents are and what "harboring" them amounts
to will vary from theory to theory, and the exact details are not
important to us here. One can take contents to be abstract entities of
some ilk (perhaps universals that can be instantiated in different
individual experiences), in which case " h a r b o r i n g " them may amount
to a genuine relation in its own right. On the other hand, one need not
view contents as being entities of any kind. T h e r e is no reason in
principle that talk of the intentional content of an experience cannot
be understood as talk about the kind of experience one is having, or
how one is experiencing. So an experience can be said to be intentional simply in virtue of being a certain kind of experience, and
our both having the thought that 2 + 2 = 4 or the belief that the square
root of 64 is 7 can be explained in terms of our having, in certain
relevant respects, the same kind of experience.
It should be clear that this account of intentionality avoids the
problems associated with the former, in that it does not claim that
intentionality essentially involves a relation to some unusual kind of
entity. This account of experience does not demand anything with
regard to the kinds of entities that we are intentionally related to,
other than that they be capable of satisfying our experiences of them,
and so it is consistent with whatever prior view one may have
regarding the objects that we directly experience.
If we take Kant's account of experience to embody this second
approach to intentionality (as I think we should15), we gain some
theoretical machinery that we can use to account for the relation of
things in themselves to experience. On this account, the thing in itself
can be characterized as the object that we are intentionally related to
in experience, and this may give us the tools we need in order to
understand Kant's talk of things in themselves as the causes of
experience. For it is simply part of our c o m m o n sense understanding
of what goes on in veridical experience that there is something,
independent of our experience of it, that we are thereby related to,
and that this object has some important role to play both in our having

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any experience at all, and also in our having the sort of experience
that we do. If the thing in itself is indeed what we are intentionally
related to in experience, then it is, in an important sense, the source of
the experience in that it is that which satisfies the content of the
experience and, more importantly, in that its existence is presupposed
by an account of how we experience it. Without the object, there
simply could be no experience of it, and in this sense the object is
necessary for the possibility of the experience: the experience is thus
grounded upon such an object.
3.

CAUSALITY

AS A PRINCIPLE

OF THE

UNDERSTANDING

It is my contention that we can make consistent sense out of Kant's

characterization of things in themselves as the causes of experience by
pursuing this suggestion that as the proper objects of experience - i.e.,
that which we are intentionally related to in experience, things in
themselves are a necessary ground of experience and so that their
existence is presupposed by any account of experience that distinguishes between how things appear to us and how these things are,
independently of so appearing. But if we are to understand what
legitimate point Kant could be making by characterizing things in
themselves as the causes of experience, we must first be clear about
what would count as an illegitimate understanding of these characterizations; that is, we must first say something about the nature of
Kant's prohibition against applying the categories of the understanding to things in themselves.
Kant's explicit task in the Critique of Pure Reason is to explain the
possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, that is, to explain how it is
possible for us to have substantive knowledge of necessary and universal truths about a presumably independent world. Because Hume
saw no way of explaining the possibility of such knowledge, he opted
to give up the view that we actually have any. But Kant's approach, as
we all know, was rather to find a way of explaining how this kind of
knowledge might be possible after all.
Whatever else may be the case, it is clear that Kant's response to
this problem relies heavily on his account of appearances and things in
themselves, and so it is not surprising that my understanding of his
response is of a piece with my understanding of this fundamental issue.
On my reading, synthetic a priori knowledge is possible not because

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the objects that we directly know are mind-dependent entities that

must conform to our ways of knowing them (as appearances are often
construed), but rather because we can know in advance of experience
certain general principles regarding how things can and must appear
to us. It is because of this that we can know, in particular, that things
must necessarily appear to us as causally related. That is, we can
indeed know that things will necessarily appear to us as causally
related, but only because this is due to how the understanding
organizes our experience - it is due, that is, to how we are rather than
to how some object (in itself) is.
We need to be clear that the argument here is not from any
antecedent or a priori knowledge of the way our experiential faculties
work to knowledge of how things must appear to us, but exactly the
reverse. That our understanding contributes various features to how
things appear to us is an hypothesis introduced to explain our purported knowledge of certain necessary and synthetic truths about the
world. So we start with the assumption that we indeed have knowledge
of necessary and synthetic truths. In order to explain how we could
know such substantive truths about an independent reality, we allow
that our mind must contribute something to how these things appear
to us. For if it is only possible that things appear to us under the
condition that they appear to us in certain ways, then we can know in
advance of experience certain non-trivial truths about how things can
and must appear to us. We thus introduce the claim that the mind
contributes certain factors to experience in order to explain the
possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge. But since we allow that
such knowledge is possible only because of the subjective contribution
to how things appear to us, we can thus have no justification for
applying these same principles to things in themselves. These are, by
hypothesis, contributions that the subject makes to how things appear
to us, and so can tell us nothing about the true nature of the objects
that appear to us.
Consequently, the claim that we cannot apply the categories to
things in themselves stems from the impossibility of such an application yielding any knowledge of how things are in themselves.
Nonetheless, Kant is clear in many places that these categories can still
be used to think about things in themselves, 16 which does not violate
the rationale for the prohibition in question. Clearly, if the notion of
things in themselves is to be even minimally intelligible, we must have

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some way of thinking about them - some concepts that we can apply
to them, and the categories, Kant claims, are just the "pure form[s] of
the employment of the understanding in respect of objects in general,
that is, of thought" [A248/B305]. But if the categories are the pure
forms of thought in general, then anything that we can think of must
be conceptualized by means of them. Of course, to claim that we can
(indeed, must) utilize the categories to form any notion of the things
that appear to us is not to claim that we thereby have any knowledge
of how these things are in themselves, and so it is clear that there both
can and must be some legitimate application of the categories to
things in themselves.
There are, of course, passages where Kant implies or explicitly
claims that beyond the realm of sensibility, the categories cannot even
be used to think an object, 17 but these passages do not represent
Kant's final thought on the matter. Keep in mind two things: first, that
if we are indeed to have any intelligible concept of the theoretical
function of things in themselves, we must at least be able to think
about them; and second, that according to the above discussion, the
prohibition against applying the categories to things in themselves
reflects the fact that they cannot lead to any knowledge of how things
are apart from being experienced. It seems clear that all Kant can or
needs to deny is that we can use the categories to obtain knowledge of
how things are in themselves. TM
4. TEXTUAL

SUPPORT

I have argued that it is not only possible but necessary that there be
some legitimate application of the categories of the understanding to
things in themselves. Since the categories constitute the very forms of
thought, if there were no legitimate application of these concepts to
things in themselves, at least for thought, we could have no coherent
concept of such entities, and so they could play no intelligible role
whatsoever in Kant's account of experience. I have also argued that
the prohibition against applying the categories to things in themselves
is only a warning that we cannot obtain any knowledge of how things
are in themselves in this fashion, but the above use of them makes no
such claim. Consequently, I propose that we understand the passages
in which Kant characterizes things in themselves as the causes of
experience as fleshing out how it is that we must think of such entities.

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By characterizing things in themselves as the causes of experience,

Kant is not claiming that we have any knowledge of the nature of the
independent reality that appears to us, or any knowledge that the
relation that such a realm stands in to experience instantiates some
kind of universal regularity (as causal relations are usually construed):
rather, he is attempting to characterize how we must conceptualize
that which we are intentionally related to in veridical experience.
It is my contention, specifically, that in characterizing things in
themselves as the causes of experience, Kant's point is only that as a
necessary ground of veridical experience, their existence is presupposed by such experience. In the passages where Kant characterizes
things in themselves in this fashion, his point is clearly not that things
in themselves are the causes of experience in the sense in which fire is
the cause of smoke, but rather that the very recognition that how
things appear to us is not how they are in themselves necessarily
presupposes some concept of the things that appear to us, considered
apart from how they appear to us. The existence of a realm of
independently real things in themselves is thus presupposed by any
account of experience that distinguishes between how things appear to
us and how they are in themselves. Consequently, by speaking of
things in themselves as the causes of experience, or as affecting our
sensibility, Kant must mean that as the objects that we are intentionally related to in experience, things in themselves are a necessary
ground of the possibility of experience. My remaining task, then, is to
argue that the passages in question can best be understood in this
fashion.
The passages in which Kant uses causal language to characterize
things in themselves can be divided into two groups: those where he
literally speaks of things in themselves (noumena or transcendental
objects) as the causes of experience, and those where he uses the
language of affectation to characterize things in themselves, i.e.,
where he speaks of things in themselves as affecting our sensibility. I
will look at textual examples of each in turn.
But before I do so, I must note that for the purposes of this paper I
will be treating the terms "thing in itself", "noumenon", and "transcendental object" as interchangeable. There is, of course, a continuing controversy in the literature as to the exact relation of these three
notions which I will not go into here. All that I need to assume for
present purposes is that these terms are (at least in the passages that I

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will be examining) co-extensive: I n e e d n o t assume that they are

actually s y n o n y m o u s . A l t h o u g h this position is n o t universally accepted, it does h a v e several i m p o r t a n t p r o p o n e n t s . 19

4.J

The Causes of Experience

T h e following are two typical examples of the passages in which K a n t

actually speaks of things in themselves as causes:
Understanding accordingly limits sensibility, but does not thereby extend its own sphere.
In the process of warning sensibility that it must not presume to claim applicability to
things-in-themselves but only to appearances, it does indeed think for itself an object in
itself, but only as the transcendental object, which is the cause of appearance and
therefore not itself appearance .... [A288/B344]
A n d later:
The faculty of sensible intuition is strictly only a . . . capacity of being affected in a
certain manner with representations .... The non-sensible cause of these representations is completely unknown to us, and cannot therefore be intuited as an
object .... We may, however, entitle the purely intelligible cause of appearances in
general the transcendental object, but merely in order to have something corresponding
to sensibility viewed as receptivity. [A494/B522J
N o t e that in the first passage, K a n t claims that it is in the process of
" w a r n i n g sensibility" that it deals only with a p p e a r a n c e s , that the
u n d e r s t a n d i n g "think[s] for itself an o b j e c t in i t s e l f . . . [as] the cause of
a p p e a r a n c e , and therefore n o t [as] itself [an] a p p e a r a n c e " . In the
s e c o n d passage we find the similar claim that we m a y "entitle the
purely intelligible cause of a p p e a r a n c e s . . , the transcendental object,
but m e r e l y in o r d e r to h a v e something c o r r e s p o n d i n g to
s e n s i b i l i t y . . . " . It seems to me that the point of these r e m a r k s is to
suggest that the v e r y n o t i o n that there are limits to sensibility, or
s o m e t h i n g " c o r r e s p o n d i n g t o " it, already implies or p r e s u p p o s e s s o m e
notion of the thing that is sensed, considered apart f r o m how it is
sensed. T h a t is, the claim that experience only informs us of h o w a
thing a p p e a r s already presupposes s o m e notion of the thing that
appears. W e m a y call this thing the non-sensible or intelligible cause
of the experience, but this m e a n s only that it is that w h i c h is
experienced, considered as it is i n d e p e n d e n t l y of being sensed or
experienced. So a l t h o u g h we find K a n t using causal l a n g u a g e here to
speak of things in themselves, the point of such l a n g u a g e is not to

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claim that we have any knowledge of how things are in themselves,

but only to emphasize that this account of experience demands some
concept of the things that appear to us,
This becomes clearer a few lines after the first quotation above. Of
"the transcendental object which is the cause of appearance and
therefore not itself appearance", Kant continues:
If we are pleased to n a m e this object n o u m e n o n for the reason that its representation is
not sensible, we are free to do so. B u t since we can apply to it none of the concepts of
our understanding, the representation r e m a i n s for us empty, and is of no service except
to m a r k the limits of our sensible knowledge and to leave open a space which we can
fill neither t h r o u g h possible experience nor t h r o u g h pure understanding. [A288/B345]

I think it is interesting that in this passage Kant recognizes that we

cannot apply to things in themselves any of the "concepts of the
understanding", and so, of course, that we cannot apply the category
of causality to them. So if Kant is violating his prohibition against
applying the categories to things in themselves, he is doing so in the
same breath in which he re-states the prohibition. Consequently, even
a minimal principle of charity would suggest that when Kant speaks of
things in themselves as the causes of appearance he cannot be claiming that things in themselves are the causes of appearances in the same
sense in which fire is the cause of smoke. Instead, these passages
suggest that the very notion that there is something that we are related
to in experience is presupposed by the recognition that our experiential faculties inform us only about how things appear to us.
But my main interest in this passage is that it explicitly associates
the concept of something as the non-sensible cause of experience with
the notion of n o u m e n o n .
This is helpful in that Kant is very clear
about how the notion of noumenon is presupposed by his account of
experience. The concept of a noumenon, Kant claims, is not (at least
in its acceptable usage) the concept of an unusual kind of object (i.e.,
the object of a non-sensible intuition), but merely the concept of an
object considered independently of our mode of sensing it. So a
noumenon is the thing that we sense, considered as it is apart from
being sensed. Note the following remark:i~
If by " n o u m e n o n " we m e a n a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensible intuition,
and so abstract from our m o d e of intuiting it, this is n o u m e n o n in the negative [i.e.,
acceptable] sense. [B306, e m p h a s e s mine]

Now if the concept of a noumenon is just the concept of the object

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367

t h a t w e sense, i n d e p e n d e n t l y of c o n s i d e r a t i o n s r e g a r d i n g h o w w e sense
it, we s h o u l d t h e n e x p e c t t h e c o n c e p t of a n o u m e n o n to b e p r e s u p p o s e d b y t h e c o n c e p t of an a p p e a r a n c e . T h a t is, t h e r e c o g n i t i o n t h a t
h o w t h i n g s a p p e a r to us is n o t h o w t h e y a r e in t h e m s e l v e s s h o u l d
p r e s u p p o s e a n o t i o n of t h e t h i n g t h a t a p p e a r s to us. A n d this is e x a c t l y
w h a t w e find:
At the same time, if we entitle certain objects, as appearances, sensible entities
(phenomena), then since we thus distinguish the mode in which we intuit them from the
nature that belongs to them in themselves, it is implied in this distinction that we place
the latter, considered in their own nature.., in opposition to the former, and that in so
doing we entitle them intelligible entities (noumena). [B306, emphases mine]
And again:
The understanding, when it entitles an object in a certain relation mere phenomena, at
the same time forms, apart from that relation, a representation of an object in itself . . . .
[Ibid., emphases mine]
T h e s e p a s s a g e s s u g g e s t t h a t the c o n c e p t of h o w s o m e t h i n g c a n
a p p e a r to us p r e s u p p o s e s s o m e c o n c e p t of the t h i n g t h a t a p p e a r s to us.
C o n s e q u e n t l y , the c l a i m t h a t we k n o w o n l y a p p e a r a n c e s - i,e., h o w
t h i n g s a p p e a r to us - p r e s u p p o s e s t h a t t h e r e is s o m e t h i n g t h a t a p p e a r s
to us. T h e s e p a s s a g e s , a l o n g w i t h t h o s e t h a t follow, s u g g e s t t h a t t h e
o b j e c t t h a t a p p e a r s to us is w h a t K a n t calls t h e t h i n g in itself o r
n o u m e n o n . T h i n g s in t h e m s e l v e s , t h e r e f o r e , a r e f o r K a n t w h a t w e a r e
i n t e n t i o n a l l y r e l a t e d to in a v e r i d i c a l e x p e r i e n c e - t h e y a r e t h e o b j e c t s
i n t e n d e d in e x p e r i e n c e , a n d a r e t h e r e b y p r e s u p p o s e d b y e x p e r i e n c e .

4.2 T h i n g s in T h e m s e l v e s as A f f e c t i n g O u r Sensibility
W e c o m e to m u c h the s a m e c o n c l u s i o n w h e n w e e x a m i n e t h e p a s s a g e s
in w h i c h K a n t s p e a k s of t h i n g s in t h e m s e l v e s as affecting o u r senses.
In t h e s e p a s s a g e s it is a b u n d a n t l y c l e a r t h a t K a n t is c l a i m i n g t h a t
t h i n g s in t h e m s e l v e s a r e the o b j e c t s t h a t we sense, c o n s i d e r e d as t h e y
a r e a p a r t f r o m b e i n g sensed. N o t e t h e f o l l o w i n g p a s s a g e s f r o m t h e
Prolegomena:
I, on the contrary, say that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given,
but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, that is, the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses.
[Remark II, p. 36]

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sensuous representation represents things not at all as they are, but only the mode in
which they affect our senses .... [Remark II, p. 37]

A n d finally:
And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess that
they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself but
only know its appearances, namely, the way in which our senses are affected by this
unknown something. The understanding, therefore, by assuming appearances, grants the
existence of things in themselves also, and to this extent we may say that the representation of such things.., is not only admissible but unavoidable. [Section 32, pp. 61-62]
T h e s e passages s u g g e s t that b y s p e a k i n g of things in themselves as
affecting our senses, K a n t m e a n s only that it is things in themselves
that we are actually related to in intuition - i.e., that are the objects
that we intuit, e v e n t h o u g h we do not intuit t h e m as they are, b u t only
as they appear. A n d t h e last passage ties in r e m a r k a b l y well with the
p r e v i o u s set of remarks. By " a s s u m i n g a p p e a r a n c e s " - that is, by
r e c o g n i z i n g that the things w h i c h we experience do not a p p e a r to us as
they really are - the u n d e r s t a n d i n g finds itself c o m p e l l e d to f o r m s o m e
n o t i o n or r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of the things that in this w a y " a f f e c t " us, i.e.,
that we are intentionally related to. C o n s e q u e n t l y , s o m e n o t i o n of this
" u n k n o w n s o m e t h i n g " w h i c h we experience is " u n a v o i d a b l e " given
K a n t ' s claim that we k n o w things only as they a p p e a r to us. This
suggests that in the passages w h e r e K a n t uses the l a n g u a g e of affectation to c h a r a c t e r i z e things in themselves, as with the passages in w h i c h
he uses explicitly causal locutions, his p o i n t is not that there is s o m e
kind of empirical relation b e t w e e n things in themselves and our
p e r c e p t u a l faculties, b u t rather a transcendental relation: things in
themselves are p a r t of the conditions of the possibility of experience in
that w i t h o u t them, we c o u l d h a v e no experiences of them.
T h e last passage is also interesting in that it speaks of a p p e a r a n c e s
as being " b a s e d u p o n " a thing in itself. T h e G e r m a n here is as follows:
In der That, wenn wir die Gegenst~inde der Sinne, wie biUig, als Blosse Erscheinungen
ansehen, gestehen wir heirdurch doeh zugleich, dass ihnen ein Ding an sich selbst zum
Grunde liege .... 20
Literally translated, a thing in itself is said to "lie as a g r o u n d for
a p p e a r a n c e s " . It is n o t m y intention to p u t too m u c h weight o n this
literal reading of the original. W h a t I wish to emphasize is rather that
this expression "zum Grunde liegen", here r e n d e r e d " b a s e d u p o n " , is
often translated elsewhere as " p r e s u p p o s e s " . 21 This in turn suggests

CAUSALITY

AND THINGS

IN THEMSELVES

369

that the point of the remark that appearances are "based upon" things
in themselves is once again that the very notion of an "appearance"
presupposes some concept of things in themselves - i.e,, that the
recognition that how things appear to us is not how they are in
themselves must already contain some notion of the things that appear
to us.
5. C O N C L U D I N G

REMARKS

I began this paper by endorsing Rescher's contention that we can

understand Kant's use of causal language to characterize things in
themselves only if we are clear about the relation of things in themselves to appearances. I differ with Rescher, however, regarding how
this relation is to be understood. It is my contention that things in
themselves and appearances are not numerically distinct entities - that
the distinction between them is epistemological rather than ontological - conceptual rather than actual. On the account that I have
proposed, things in themselves are the objects that we are intentionally related to in experience, and the point of Kant's remark that we
know only appearances and not things in themselves is that while it is
independently real things in themselves that we are related to in
experience, we do not experience these things as they are independently of being experienced, but only as they appear to us via
our subjective experiential faculties. Consequently, things in themselves are a necessary condition for the possibility of experience, and
hence our experiences of them are "based upon" or presuppose the
existence of such entities.
It is this dependence of experience upon things in themselves, I
argue, that Kant is trying to capture when he uses causal language to
characterize things in themselves. Clearly, if things in themselves and
appearances are not numerically distinct, then any characterization of
things in themselves as the causes of appearances cannot be understood in typical fashion, because causal relations, as we usually think
of them, subsist only between numerically distinct entities or events
(or numerically distinct parts or stages of some entity). Furthermore,
even a minimal principle of charity would suggest that in using these
causal locutions, Kant must mean something quite distinct from what
he means when he characterizes causality as a category of the understanding, in that he uses these locutions in the same breath in which he

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asserts that the categories cannot be applied to things in themselves.

And lastly, once we are clear about the dependence of experience
upon things in themselves, we find that we have a very natural,
consistent a n d non-problematic way of understanding these passages.
Things in themselves are not - and could not be - the causes of
appearances in the sense in which fire is the cause of smoke, because
the difference between appearances and things in themselves is conceptual rather than ontological. Kant's point, instead, is merely that as
the objects that we are intentionally related to in experience, things in
themselves are a necessary ground of the possibility of our experiences
of them.
NOTES
* Substantial work on this paper was done while I attended the National Endowment for
the Humanities 1986 Summer Seminar given by Hector-Neri Castafieda at Indiana
University. I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for their
support, and Professor Castafieda and the other members of the seminar for their many
invaluable comments, suggestions, and criticisms.
See, for example, N. Rescher: 1972, 'Noumenal Causality', in L. W. Beck (ed.): The
Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress, D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, pp. 462-63; and G. Schrader: 1949, 'The Thing in Itself in Kantian Philosophy',
reprinted in R. P. Wolff: 1967, Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, University of
Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame and London, pp. 172-88.
2 I. Kant: 1783, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, translated by L. W. Beck!
1950, The Bobbs Merrill Company Inc., Indianapolis and New York, Section 30, p. 60.
All future references to the Prolegomena will be to this edition.
3 All references to the Critique will be to the standard A/B pagination. The translation
is that of N. Kemp-Smith: 1929, St. Martins Press, New York.
4 A494/B522, A288/B344-345, Prolegomena, Remark II, p. 36, and Section 32, pp.
61-62.
s See, for example, A44/B61, A190/B235, the Prolegomena, Remark II, page 36,
Section 32, pp. 61-62, Section 36, p. 65, and Section 32, pp. 61-62.
6 Strawson, P.: 1966, The Bounds of Sense, Methuen Co. Ltd., London, pp. 41-42.
7 0 p . cit. footnote 7.
8 Strawson, pp. 464-65.
9 In what follows I will be concerned only with Kant's account of veridical experience.
Although I think that some account of non-veridical experience can be gleaned from
the Critique, Kant explicitly says 'little on this matter. So unless I indicate to the
contrary, when I speak here of "experience", I can be taken to mean "veridical
experience".
30 But I have done so in other places. See Baldner, K.: forthcoming, 'Quining Kant',
in the Proceedings of the Sixth International Kant Congress, and my doctoral

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dissertation from the University of California, Irvine, 1985, Intentionality and the

' Critique of Pure Reason'.

1~ A38/B55, A42/B59, B156, B158, A147/B186, A211/B258, A248-249, A538/B566,
A539/B567, and the Prolegomena, pp. 30 and 93.
12 I have argued for this in my dissertation, pp. 223-30, and 242-57, and, in an
abbreviated fashion in footnote 18 of 'Quining Kant'. The relevant passages in the
originals can be found in G. Bird: 1962, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London, pp. 29, 41-42; G. Prauss: 1974, Kant und das Problem der Dinge
an sich, Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn, pp. 13-23, and 38-39; H. A.
Allison: 1976, 'Kant's Refutation of Realism', Dialectica 30, 227-28, and 1983,
Kant's Transcendental Idealism, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, p. 8.
i3 See my doctoral dissertation, cited in footnote 10 above.
14 Follesdal's interpretation of Husserl can be found in D. F011esdal: 1972, 'An
Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers', in R. Olson and A. Paul
(eds.), Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 417-29; and 1969, 'Husserl's Notion of Noema', The Journal of Philosophy
66, 680-87. This reading of Husserl is further developed in D. W. Smith and R.
McIntyre: 1982, Husserl and Intentionality, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht.
~5 For an alternate understanding of Kant's account of intentionality, see R. Aquila:
1979, 'Appearances and Things in Themselves: lntentionality and Reality in Kant',
Archiv fiir Geschicte der Philosophie 61, 295 ft.; and 1980, 'Intentional Objects and
Kantian Appearances', Philosophical Topics 17, 9-37.
16 See, for example, A95 and A248/B305.
~7 For example, A96, B146 and B307.
18 Rather than considering all the relevant passages individually, let me simply call
attention to two important revisions to the Critique that Kant makes in the Nachtriige.
(These revisions are noted by Kemp-Smith on pages 265 and 187, respectively, of the
Kemp-Smith translation of the Critique.) In the section on "Phenomena and Noumena",
Kant characterizes the use of the categories independently of an object given through
intuition as their transcendental employment. Kant claims there that "It]he merely
transcendental employment of the categories, is therefore, no employment at all . . . . "
[A247/B304], suggesting that they cannot be thus employed even for thought, but in the
Nachtriige, Kant appends to this: "for the knowing of anything". So the transcendental
employment simply cannot lead to knowledge of an object, leaving open the possibility
that the categories can still be used to think about things in themselves. A similar
change can be found in the "Schematism". There we find the claim that "[t]he pure
concepts can find no object, and so can acquire 11o meaning which might yield a concept
of some object" [A147/B186]. But in the Nachtrfige, this is altered to read " . . . and so
can acquire no meaning which might yield knowledge [eine Erkenntnis] of some
object". These revisions, coupled with the theoretical remarks made earlier, lead me to
conclude that while the categories cannot be used to gain any knowledge of how things
are independently of how we experience them, they can indeed be used to form
concepts of the things that appear to us.
19 The primary examples I have in mind are H. A. Allison: 1968, 'Kant's Concept of
the Transcendental Object', Kant-Studien 59, 165-86; and E. Bencivenga: 1984,
'Identity, Appearances, and Things in Themselves', Dialogue 23, footnote 11; and E.

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Bencivenga: 1987, Kant's Copernican Revolution, Oxford University Press, New York.
It is well known that Kant eliminated the expression "transcendental object" in the
portions of the text that were re-written for the second edition. It is my own view - here
unargued for - that in the first edition the expression is ambiguous: sometimes Kant
indeed uses it to speak of things in themselves, and at other times, the point is simply
that the concept of the transcendental object is the concept of a something in general =
x, i.e., the concept of "objecthood" that is imposed on experience by the categories.
20 Kant, I.: 1911, Kant's Gesammehe Schriften, Band IV, K6niglich Preussischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, p. 314.
2~ See, for example, the German at Bxix, Bxlii, A23/B38, and A171/B212.
REFERENCES
Allison, H. A.: 1968, 'Kant's Concept of the Transcendental Object', Kant-Stadien 59,
165-86.
Allison, H. A.: 1976, 'Kant's Refutation of Realism', Dialectica 30, 223-53.
Allison, H. A.: 1983, Kanfs Transcendental Idealism, Yale University Press, New
Haven and London.
Aquila, R.: 1979, 'Things and Themselves and Appearances: Intentionality and Reality
in Kant', Archly fiir Geschicte der Philosophic 61, 293-308.
Aquila, R.: 1980, 'Intentional Objects and Kantian Appearances', Philosophical Topics
17, 9-34.
Baldner, K.: forthcoming, 'Quining Kant', The Proceedings of the Sixth International

Kant Congress.
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at the University of California, Irvine.
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Bencivenga, E.: 1984, 'Identity, Appearances, and Things in Themselves', Dialogue 23,
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Bird, G.: 1962, Kant's Theory of Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
F011esdal, D.: 1969, 'Husserl's Notion of Noema', The Journal of Philosophy 66, 680-87.
F011esdal, D.: 1972, 'An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers' in
Olson, R. and Paul, A. (eds.): Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia, Johns
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 417-29.
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Prauss, G.: 1974, Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich, Bouvier Herbert Grundmann, Bonn.
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P.: 1967, Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, University of Notre Dame Press,
Notre Dame and London.
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Department of Philosophy
Eastern Illinois University
Charleston, IL 61920
U.S.A.