Chapter XXIII: Section 26: concludes by consideration of the question why appearances (1)

must conform to the _a priori_ categories. It is no more surprising, Kant claims, than that they should agree with the _a priori_ forms of intuition. The categories and the intuitional forms are relative to the same subject to which the appearances are relative; and the appearances “as mere representations are subject to no law of connection save that which the combining faculty prescribes.”

The summary of the deduction given in section 27 discusses the three possible theories regarding the origin of pure concepts, viz. those of _generatio aequivoca_ (out of experience), _epigenesis_, and _preformation_. The first is disproved by the deduction. The second is the doctrine of the deduction and fulfils all the requirements of demonstration. The proof that the categories are at once independent of experience and yet also universally valid for all experience is of the strongest possible kind, namely, that they make experience itself possible. The third theory, that the categories, while subjective and self-discovered, originate in faculties which are implanted in us by our Creator and which are so formed as to yield concepts in harmony with the laws of nature, lies open to two main objections. In the first place, this is an hypothesis capable of accounting equally well for any kind of _a priori_ whatsoever; the predetermined powers of judgment can be multiplied without limit. But a second objection is decisive, namely, that on such a theory the categories would lack the particular kind of necessity which is required. They would express only the necessities imposed upon our thinking by the constitution of our minds, and would not justify any assertion of necessary connection _in the object_. Kant might also have added,[976] that this hypothesis is metaphysical, and therefore offers in explanation of the _empirical_ validity of _a priori_ concepts a theory which rests upon and involves their _unconditioned_ employment. That is a criticism which is reinforced by the teaching of the _Dialectic_.

To return now to the omitted sections 22 to 25. Section 22 makes no fresh contribution to the argument of the first edition. Its teaching in regard to pure intuition and mathematical knowledge has already been commented upon. In section 23 Kant dwells upon an interesting consequence of the argument of the deduction. The categories have a wider scope than the pure forms of sense. Since the argument of the deduction has shown that judgment is the indispensable instrument both for reducing a manifold to the unity of apperception and also for conferring upon representations a relation to an object, it follows that the categories which are simply the possible functions of unity in judgment are valid for any and every consciousness that is sensuously conditioned and whose knowledge is therefore acquired through synthesis of a given manifold. Though such consciousness may not intuit in terms of space and time, it must none the less apprehend objects in terms of the categories. The categories thus extend to _objects of sensuous intuition in general_. They are not, however, valid of objects as such, that is, of things in themselves. As empty relational forms they have _meaning_ only in reference to a given matter; and as instruments for the reduction of variety to the unity of apperception their _validity_ has been proved only for conscious and sensuous experience. Even if the possibility of a non-sensuous intuitive understanding, capable of apprehending things in themselves, be granted, we have no sufficient ground for asserting that the forms which such understanding will employ must coincide with the categories.[977] These are points which will come up for discussion in connection with Kant’s more detailed argument in the chapter on the distinction between phenomena and noumena.[978]

The heading to section 24 is decidedly misleading. The phrase “objects of the senses in general” might be synonymous with “objects of intuition in general” of the preceding section. To interpret it, however, by the contents of the section, it means “objects of _our_ senses.” This section ought, therefore, to form part of section 26, which in its opening sentences supplies its proper introduction. (It may also be noted that the opening sentences of section 24 are a needless repetition of section 23. This would seem to show that it was not written in immediate continuation of it.) The first three paragraphs of section 24 expound the same doctrine of schematism as that outlined in section 26, save that time alone is referred to. The remaining paragraphs of section 24 deal with the connected doctrine of inner sense. Section 25 deals with certain consequences which follow from that doctrine of inner sense.[979]

THE DOCTRINE OF INNER SENSE

We have still to consider a doctrine of great importance in Kant’s thinking, that of inner sense. The significance of this doctrine is almost inversely proportionate to the scantiness and obscurity of the passages in which it is expounded and developed. Much of the indefiniteness and illusiveness of the current interpretations of Kant would seem to be directly traceable to the commentator’s failure to appreciate the position which it occupies in Kant’s system. Several of Kant’s chief results are given as deductions from it, while it itself, in turn, is largely inspired by the need for a secure basis upon which these positions may be made to rest. The relation of the doctrine to its consequences is thus twofold. Kant formulates it in order to safeguard or rather to justify certain conclusions; and yet these conclusions have themselves in part been arrived at owing to his readiness to accept such a doctrine, and to what would seem to have been his almost instinctive feeling of its kinship (notwithstanding the very crude form in which alone he was able to formulate it) with Critical teaching. It was probably one of the earliest of the many new tenets which Kant adopted in the years immediately subsequent to the publication of the inaugural _Dissertation_, but it first received adequate statement in the second edition of the _Critique_. Kant took advantage of the second edition to reply to certain criticisms to which his view of time had given rise, and in so doing was compelled to formulate the doctrine of inner sense in a much more explicit manner. Hitherto he had assumed its truth, but had not, as it would seem, sufficiently reflected upon the various connected conclusions to which he was thereby committed. This is one of the many instances which show how what is most fundamental in Kant’s thinking is frequently that of which he was himself least definitely aware. Like other thinkers, he was most apt to discuss what he himself was inclined to question and feel doubt over. The sources of his insight as well as the causes of his failure often lay beyond the purview of his explicitly developed tenets; and only under the stimulus of criticism was he constrained and enabled to bring them within the circle of reasoned conviction. We may venture the prophecy that if Kant had been able to devote several years more to the maturing of the problems which in the face of so many difficulties he had brought thus far, the doctrine of inner sense, or rather the doctrines to which it gives expression, would have been placed in the forefront of his teaching, and their systematic interconnection, both in the way of ground and of consequence, with all his chief tenets would have been traced and securely established.

This would have involved, however, two very important changes. In the first place, Kant would have had to recognise the unsatisfactory character of the supposed analogy between inner and outer sense. As already remarked,[980] no great thinker, except Locke, has attempted to interpret inner consciousness on the analogy of the senses; and the obscurities of Kant’s argument are not, therefore, to be excused on the ground that “the difficulty, how a subject can have an internal intuition of itself, is common to every theory.” Secondly, Kant would have had to define the relation in which he conceived this part of his teaching to stand to his theory of consciousness. But both these changes could have been made without requiring that he should give up the doctrines which are mainly responsible for his theory of inner sense, namely, that there can be no awareness of awareness, but only of existences which are objective, and that there is consequently no consciousness of the generative, synthetic processes[981] which constitute consciousness on its subjective side. It is largely in virtue of these conclusions that Kant’s phenomenalism differs from the subjective idealism of his predecessors. If we ignore or reject them, merely because of the obviously unsatisfactory manner in which alone Kant has been able to formulate them, we rule ourselves out from understanding the intention and purpose of much that is most characteristic of Critical teaching.

The doctrine of inner sense, as expounded by Locke, suffers from an ambiguity which seems almost inseparable from it, namely, the confusion between inner sense, on the one hand as a _sense_ in some degree analogous in nature to what may be called outer sense, and on the other as consisting in self-conscious reflection. This same confusion is traceable throughout the _Critique_, and is, as we shall find, in large part responsible for Kant’s failure to recognise, independently of outside criticism, the central and indispensable part which this doctrine is called upon to play in his system.

The doctrine is stated by Kant as follows. Just as outer sense is affected by noumenal agencies, and so yields a manifold arranged in terms of a form peculiar to it, namely, space, so inner sense is affected by the mind itself and its inner state.[982] The manifold thereby caused is arranged in terms of a form peculiar to inner sense, namely, time. The content thus arranged falls into two main divisions. On the one hand we have feelings, desires, volitions, that is, states of the mind in the strict sense, subjective non-spatial existences. On the other hand we have sensations, perceptions, images, concepts, in a word, representations (_Vorstellungen_) of every possible type. These latter all refer to the external world in space, and yet, according to Kant, speaking from the limited point of view of a critique of _knowledge_, form the proper content of inner sense. “...the representations of the outer senses constitute the actual material with which we occupy our minds,”[983] “the whole material of knowledge even for our inner sense.”[984] (These statements, it may be observed, are first made in the second edition.) As Kant explains himself in B 67-8, he would seem to mean that the mind in the process of “setting” representations of outer sense in space affects itself, and is therefore constrained to arrange the given representations likewise in time. No new content, additional to that of outer sense, is thereby generated, but what previously as object of outer sense existed merely in space is now also subjected to conditions of time. The representations of outer sense are all by their very nature likewise representations of inner sense. To outer sense is due both their content and their spatial form; to inner sense they owe only the additional form of time; their content remains unaffected in the process of being taken over by a second sense. This yields such explanation as is possible of Kant’s assertion in A 33 that “time can never be a determination of outer appearances.” He may be taken as meaning that time is never a determination of outer sense _as such_, but only of its contents as always likewise subject to the form of inner sense.[985]

This is how Kant formulates his position from the extreme subjectivist point of view which omits to draw any distinction between representation and its object, between inner states of the self and appearances in space. All representations, he says,[986] all appearances without exception, are states of inner sense, modifications of the mind. Some exist only in time, some exist both in space and in time; but all alike are modes of the identical self, mere representations (_blosse Vorstellungen_). Though appearances may exist outside one another in space, space itself exists only as representation, merely “in us.”

Now without seeking to deny that this is a view which we find in the second edition of the _Critique_ as well as in the first,[987] and that even in passages which are obviously quite late in date of writing Kant frequently speaks in terms which conform to it, we must be no less insistent in maintaining that an alternative view more and more comes to the front in proportion as Kant gains mastery over the conflicting tendencies that go to constitute his new Critical teaching. From the very first he uses language which implies that _some_ kind of distinction must be drawn between representations and objects represented, between subjective cognitive states in the proper sense of the term and existences in space.

“Time can never be a determination of outer appearances. It belongs
neither to form nor position, etc. On the other hand it determines
the relation of representations in our inner state.”[988]

Similarly in those very sentences in which he asserts all appearances to be _blosse Vorstellungen_, a distinction is none the less implied.

“Time is the formal _a priori_ condition of all appearances in
general. Space, as the pure form of all outer intuition, is as _a
priori_ condition limited exclusively (_bloss_) to outer
appearances. On the other hand as all representations, _whether
they have outer things as their object or not_, still in themselves
belong, as determinations of the mind, to the inner state, and this
inner state is subject to the formal condition of inner intuition,
that is of time, time is an _a priori_ condition of all appearance
whatever. It is, indeed, the immediate condition of the inner
appearance (of our souls), and thereby mediately likewise of outer
appearances.”[989]

As the words which I have italicised show, Kant, even in the very sentence in which he asserts outer representations to be inner states, none the less recognises that appearances in space are not representations in the same meaning of that term as are subjective states. They are the _objects_ of representation, not representation itself. The latter alone is correctly describable as a state of the mind. The former may be conditioned by representation, and may therefore be describable as appearances, but are not for that reason to be equated with representation. But before the grounds and nature of this distinction can be formulated in the proper Critical terms, we must consider the reasons which induced Kant to commit himself to this obscure and difficult doctrine of inner sense. As I shall try to show, it is no mere excrescence upon his system; on the contrary, it is inseparably bound up with all his main tenets.

One of the chief influences which constrained Kant to develop this doctrine is the conclusion, so essential to his position, that knowledge must always involve an intuitional manifold in addition to _a priori_ forms and concepts. That being so, he was bound to deny to the mind all power of gaining knowledge by mere reflection. If our mental activities and states lay open to direct inspection, we should have to recognise in the mind a non-sensuous intuitional power. Through self-consciousness or reflection we should acquire knowledge independently of sense. Such apprehension, though limited to the mind’s own operations and states, would none the less be _knowledge_, and yet would not conform to the conditions which, as the transcendental deduction has shown, are involved in all knowledge. In Kant’s view the belief that we possess self-consciousness of this type, a power of reflection thus conceived, is wholly illusory. To assume any such faculty would be to endow the mind with occult or mystical powers, and would throw us back upon the Leibnizian rationalism, which traces to such reflection our consciousness of the categories, and which rears upon this foundation the entire body of metaphysical science.[990]

The complementary _negative_ conclusion of the transcendental deduction is a no less fundamental and constraining influence in compelling Kant to develop a doctrine of inner sense. If all knowledge is knowledge of appearances, or if, as he states his position in the _Analytic of Principles_,[991] our knowledge can extend no further than sense experience and inference from such experience, either knowledge of our inner states must be mediated, like our knowledge of outer objects, by sensation, or we can have no knowledge of them whatsoever. On Critical principles, consistently applied, there can be no middle course between acceptance of an indirect empirical knowledge of the mind and assertion of its unknowableness. Mental activities may perhaps be thought in terms of the pure forms of understanding, but in that case their conception will remain as purely problematic and as indeterminate as the conception of the thing in itself. It is impossible for Kant to admit _immediate_ consciousness of the mind’s real activities and states, and at the same time to deny that we can have knowledge of things in themselves. The _Aesthetic_, in proving that everything in space and time is appearance, implicitly assumes the impossibility of direct self-conscious reflection; and the transcendental deduction in showing that all knowledge involves as correlative factors both sense and thought, has reinforced this conclusion, and calls for its more explicit recognition, in reference to the more inward aspect of experience.

As we have already noted,[992] Kant’s doctrine of inner sense was probably adopted in the early ’seventies, and though it is not itself definitely formulated in the first edition, the chief consequence that follows from it is clearly recognised. Thus in the _Aesthetic_ Kant draws the conclusion that, as time is the form of inner sense, everything apprehended in time, and consequently all inner states and activities, can be known only as appearances. The mind (meaning thereby the ultimate conditioning grounds of consciousness) is as indirectly known as is any other mode of noumenal existence. In the _Analytic_, whenever he is called upon to express himself upon this and kindred points, he continues to hold to this position; and in the section on the _Paralogisms_ all the main consequences that follow from its acceptance are drawn in the most explicit and unambiguous manner. It is argued that as the inner world, the feelings, volitions and representations of which we are conscious, is a world constructed out of a given manifold yielded by inner sense, and is therefore known only as the appearance of a deeper reality which we have no power of apprehending, it possesses no superiority either of certainty or of immediacy over the outer world of objects in space. We have immediate consciousness of both alike, but in both cases this immediate consciousness rests upon the transcendental synthetic processes whereby such consciousness is conditioned and generated. The transcendental activities fall outside the field of empirical consciousness and therefore of knowledge.

Thus Kant would seem to be maintaining that the radical error committed by the subjective idealists, and with which all the main defects of their teaching are inseparably bound up, lies in their ascription to the mind of a power of direct self-conscious reflection, and consequently in their confusion of the transcendental activities which condition consciousness with the inner states and processes which such consciousness reveals. This has led them to ascribe priority and independence to our inner states, and to regard outer objects as known only by an inference from them. The Critical teaching insists on the distinction between appearance and reality, applies it to the inner life, and so restores to our consciousness of the outer world the certainty and immediacy of which subjective idealism would profess to deprive it. Such are the important conclusions at which Kant arrives in his various “refutations of idealism”; and it will be advisable to consider these refutations in full detail before attempting to complete our statement of his doctrine of inner sense.

KANT’S REFUTATIONS OF IDEALISM

Kant has in a number of different passages attempted to define his Critical standpoint in its distinction from the positions of Descartes and Berkeley. Consideration of these will enable us to follow Kant in his gradual recognition of the manifold consequences to which he is committed by his substitution of inner sense for direct self-conscious intuition or reflection, or rather of the various congenial tenets which it gives him the right consistently to defend and maintain. In Kant’s Critical writings we find no less than seven different statements of his refutation of idealism: (I.) in the fourth _Paralogism_ of the first edition of the _Critique_; (II.) in section 13 (_Anm._ ii. and iii.) of the _Prolegomena_; (III.) in section 49 of the _Prolegomena_; (IV.) in the second appendix to the _Prolegomena_; (V.) in sections added in the second edition at the conclusion of the _Aesthetic_ (B 69 ff.); (VI.) in the “refutation of idealism” (B 274-8), in the supplementary section at the end of the section on the _Postulates_ (B 291-4), and in the note to the new preface (B xxxix-xl); (VII.) in the “refutation of problematic idealism” given in the _Seven Small Papers_ which originated in Kant’s conversations with Kiesewetter. Consideration of these in the above order will reveal Kant’s gradual and somewhat vacillating recognition of the new and revolutionary position which alone genuinely harmonises with Critical principles. But first we must briefly consider the various meanings which Kant at different periods assigned to the term idealism. Even in the _Critique_ itself it is employed in a great variety of diverse connotations.

In the pre-Critical writings[993] the term idealism is usually employed in what was its currently accepted meaning, namely, as signifying any philosophy which denied the existence of an independent world corresponding to our subjective representations. But even as thus used the term is ambiguous.[994] It may signify either denial of a _corporeal_ world independent of our representations or denial of an immaterial world “corresponding to” the represented material world, _i.e._ the denial of _Dinge an sich_. For there are traceable in Leibniz’s writings two very different views as to the reality of the material world. Sometimes the monads are viewed as purely intelligible substances without materiality of any kind. The kingdom of the extended is set into the representing subjects; only the immaterial world of unextended purely spiritual monads remains as independently real. At other times the monads, though in themselves immaterial, are viewed as constituting through their coexistence an independent material world and a materially occupied space. Every monad has a spatial sphere of activity. The material world is an objective existence due to external relations between the monads, not a merely subjective existence internal to each of them. This alternation of standpoints enabled Leibniz’s successors to deny that they were idealists; and as the more daring and speculative aspects of Leibniz’s teaching were slurred over in the process of its popularisation, it was the second, less consistent view, which gained the upper hand. Wolff, especially in his later writings, denounces idealism; and in the current manuals, sections in refutation of idealism became part of the recognised philosophical teaching. Idealism still, however, continued to be used ambiguously, as signifying indifferently either denial of material bodies or denial of things in themselves. This is the dual meaning which the term presents in Kant’s pre-Critical writings. In his _Dilucidatio_ (1755)[995] he refutes idealism by means of the principle that a substance cannot undergo changes unless it is a substance independent of other substances. Obviously this argument can at most prove the existence of an independent world, not that it is spatial or material. And as Vaihinger adds, it does not even rule out the possibility that changes find their source in a Divine Being. In the _Dreams of a Visionseer_ (1766)[996] Swedenborg is described as an idealist, but without further specification of the exact sense in which the term is employed. In the inaugural _Dissertation_ (1770)[997] idealism is again rejected, on the ground that sense-affection points to the presence of an intelligible object or _noumenon_.

In Kant’s class lectures on metaphysics,[998] which fall, in part at least, between 1770 and 1781, the term idealism is employed in a very different sense, which anticipates its use in the _Appendix_ to the _Prolegomena_.[999] The teaching of the _Dissertation_, that things in themselves are knowable, is now described as dogmatic, Platonic, mystical (_schwärmerischer_) idealism. He still rejects the idealism of Berkeley, and still entitles it simply idealism, without limiting or descriptive predicates. But now also he employs the phrase “problematic idealism” as descriptive of his own new position. This is, of course, contrary to his invariable usage elsewhere, but is interesting as showing that about this time his repugnance to the term idealism begins to give way, and that he is willing to recognise that the relation of the Critical teaching to idealism is not one of simple opposition. He now begins to regard idealism as a factor, though a radically transformed factor, in his own philosophy.

Study of the _Critique_ reinforces this conclusion. In the _Aesthetic_ Kant teaches the “transcendental ideality” of space and time; and in the _Dialectic_ (in the fourth _Paralogism_) describes his position as idealism, though with the qualifying predicate transcendental.[1000] But though this involves an extension of the previous connotation of the term idealism, and might therefore have been expected to increase the existing confusion, it has the fortunate effect of constraining Kant to recognise and discriminate the various meanings in which it may be employed. This is done somewhat clumsily, as if it were a kind of afterthought. In the introductory syllogism of the fourth _Paralogism_ Descartes’ position and his own are referred to simply as idealism and dualism respectively. The various possible sub-species of idealism as presented in the two editions of the _Critique_ and in the _Prolegomena_ may be tabulated as follows:

{Material {Sceptical {Problematic (the position of Descartes).
{ { {Sceptical in the stricter and more usual
Idealism { { { sense (the position of Hume).
{ {Dogmatic (the position of Berkeley).
{Formal or Critical or Transcendental (Kant’s own position).

The distinction between problematic idealism and idealism of the more strictly sceptical type is not clearly drawn by Kant.[1001] Very strangely Kant in this connection never mentions Hume: the reference in B xxxix _n._ is probably not to Hume but to Jacobi. Transcendental idealism is taken as involving an empirical realism and dualism, and is set in opposition to transcendental realism which is represented as involving empirical idealism. In B xxxix _n._ Kant speaks of “psychological idealism,” meaning, as it would seem, material or non-Critical idealism.

In the second appendix to the _Prolegomena_ Kant draws a further distinction, in line with that already noted in his lectures on metaphysics. Tabulated it is as follows:

{Mystical, in the sense of belief in and reliance on a supposed
{ human power of intellectual intuition. It is described as
Idealism{idealism in the strict (_eigentlich_) sense--the position of the
{Eleatics, of Plato and Berkeley.
{Formal or Critical--Kant’s own position.

This latter classification can cause nothing but confusion. The objections that have to be made against it from Kant’s own critical standpoint are stated below.[1002]

Let us now consider, in the order of their presentation, the various refutations of idealism which Kant has given in his Critical writings.

=I. Refutation of Idealism as given in First Edition of “Critique”= (A 366-80).--This refutation is mainly directed against Descartes, who is mentioned by name in A 367. Kant, as Vaihinger suggests, was very probably led to recognise Descartes’ position as a species of idealism in the course of a re-study of Descartes before writing the section on the _Paralogisms_. As already pointed out, this involves the use of the term idealism in a much wider sense than that which was usually given to it in Kant’s own day. In the development of his argument Kant also wavers between two very different definitions of this idealism, as being denial of _immediate_ certainty and as denial of all certainty.[1003] The second interpretation, which would make it apply to Hume rather than to Descartes, is strengthened in the minds of his readers by his further distinction[1004] between dogmatic and sceptical idealism, and the identification of the idealism under consideration with the latter. The title problematic which Kant in the second edition[1005] applies to Descartes’ position suffers from this same ambiguity. As a matter of fact, Kant’s refutation applies equally well to either position. The teaching of Berkeley, which coincides with dogmatic idealism as here defined by Kant, namely, as consisting in the contention that the conception of matter is inherently contradictory, is not dwelt upon, and the appended promise of refutation is not fulfilled.

Descartes’ position is stated as follows: only our own existence and inner states are immediately apprehended by us; all perceptions are modifications of inner sense; and the existence of external objects can therefore be asserted only by an inference from the inner perceptions viewed as effects. In criticism, Kant points out that since an effect may result from more than one cause, this inference to a quite determinate cause, viz. objects as bodies in space, is doubtfully legitimate. The cause of our inner states may lie within and not without us, and even if external, need not consist in spatial objects. Further, leaving aside the question of a possible alternative to the assumption of independent material bodies, the assertion of the existence of such objects would, on Descartes’ view, be merely conjectural. It could never have certainty in any degree equivalent to that possessed by the experiences of inner sense.

“By an idealist, therefore, we must not understand one who denies
the existence of outer objects of the senses, but only one who does
not admit that their existence is known through immediate
perception, and who therefore concludes that we can never, by way
of any possible experience, be completely certain of their
reality.”[1006]

No sooner is the term idealist thus clearly defined than Kant, in keeping with the confused character of the entire section, proceeds to the assertion (_a_) that there are idealists of another type, namely, transcendental idealists,[1007] and (_b_) that the non-transcendental idealists sometimes also adopt a dogmatic position, not merely questioning the immediacy of our knowledge of matter, but asserting it to be inherently contradictory. All this points to the composite origin of the contents of this section.

Transcendental idealism is opposed to empirical idealism. It maintains that phenomena are representations merely, not things in themselves. Space and time are the sensuous forms of our intuitions. Empirical idealism, on the other hand, goes together with transcendental realism. It maintains that space and time are given as real in themselves, in independence of our sensibility. (Transcendental here, as in the phrase “transcendental ideality,”[1008] is exactly equivalent to transcendent.) But such a contention is inconsistent with the other main tenet of empirical idealism. For if our inner representations have to be taken as entirely distinct from their objects, they cannot yield assurance _even of the existence_ of these objects. To the transcendental idealist no such difficulty is presented. His position naturally combines with empirical realism, or, as it may also be entitled, empirical dualism. Material bodies in space, being merely subjective representations, are immediately apprehended. The existence of matter can be established “without our requiring to issue out beyond our bare self-consciousness or to assume anything more than the certainty of the representations in us, _i.e._ of the _cogito ergo sum_.”[1009] Though the objects thus apprehended are outside one another in space, space itself exists only in us.

“Outer objects (bodies) are mere appearances, and are therefore
nothing but a species of my representations, the objects of which
are something only through these representations. Apart from them
they are nothing. Thus outer things exist as well as I myself, and
both, indeed, upon the immediate witness of my
self-consciousness....”[1010]

The only difference is that the representation of the self belongs only to inner, while extended bodies also belong to outer sense. There is thus a dualism, but one that falls entirely within the field of consciousness, and which is therefore empirical, not transcendental. There is indeed a transcendental object which “in the transcendental sense may be outside us,”[1011] but it is unknown and is not in question. It ought not to be confused with our representations of matter and corporeal things.

From this point[1012] the argument becomes disjointed and repeats itself, and there is much to be said in support of the contention of Adickes that the remainder of the section is made up of a number of separate interpolations.[1013] First, Kant applies the conclusion established in the _Postulates of Empirical Thought_, viz. that reality is revealed only in sensation. As sensation is an element in all outer perception, perception affords immediate certainty of real existence, Kant next enters[1014] upon a eulogy of sceptical idealism as “a benefactor of human reason.” It brings home to us the utter impossibility of proving the existence of matter on the assumption that spatial objects are things in themselves, and so constrains us to justify the assertions which we are at every moment making. And such justification is, Kant here claims, only possible if we recognise that outer objects as mere representations are immediately known. In the next paragraph we find a sentence which, together with the above eulogistic estimate of the merits of idealism, shows how very far Kant, at the time of writing, was from feeling the need of differentiating his position from that of subjectivism. The sentence is this:

“We cannot be sentient of what is outside ourselves, but only of
what is in ourselves, and the whole of our self-consciousness
therefore yields nothing save merely our own determinations.”

It is probable, indeed, that the paragraph in which this occurs is of very early origin, prior to the development of the main body of the _Analytic_; for in the same paragraph we also find the assertion, utterly at variance with the teaching of the _Analytic_ and with that of the first and third _Paralogisms_, that “the thinking ego” is known phenomenally as _substance_.[1015] We seem justified in concluding that the various manuscripts which have gone to form this section on the fourth _Paralogism_ were written at an early date within the Critical period.

We may note, in passing, two sentences in which, as in that quoted above, a distinction between representations and their objects is recognised in wording if not in fact.

“All outer perception furnishes immediate proof of something actual
in space, or rather is the actual itself. To this extent empirical
realism is beyond question, _i.e._ there corresponds to our outer
perceptions something actual in space.”[1016]

Again in A 377 the assertion occurs that “our outer senses, as regards the data from which experience can arise, have their actual corresponding objects in space.” Certainly these statements, when taken together with the other passages in this section, form a sufficiently strange combination of assertion and denial. Either there is a distinction between representation and its object or there is not; if the former, then objects in space are not merely representations; if the latter, then the “correspondence” is merely that of a thing with itself.[1017]

* * * * *

This refutation of idealism will not itself stand criticism. For two separate reasons it entirely fails to attain its professed end. In the first place, it refutes the position of Descartes only by virtually accepting the still more extreme position of Berkeley. Outer objects, Kant argues, are immediately known because they are ideas merely. There is no need for inference, because there is no transcendence of the domain of our inner consciousness. In other words, Kant refutes the problematic idealism of Descartes by means of the more subjective idealism of Berkeley. The “dogmatic” idealism of Berkeley in the form in which Kant here defines it,[1018] namely, as consisting in the assertion that the notion of an independent spatial object involves inherent contradictions, is part of his own position. For that reason he was bound to fail in his promise[1019] to refute such dogmatic idealism. Fortunately he never even attempts to do so. In the second place, Kant ignores the fact that he has himself adopted an “idealist” view of inner experience. Inner experience is not for him, as it was for Descartes, the immediate apprehension of genuine reality. As it is only appearance, the incorporation of outer experience within it, so far from establishing the reality of the objects of outer sense, must rather prove the direct contrary. No more is really established than Descartes himself invariably assumes, namely, the actual existence of mental representations of a corporeal world in space. Descartes’ further assertion that the world of things in themselves can be inferred to be material and spatial, Kant, of course, refuses to accept. On this latter point Kant is in essential agreement with Berkeley.

It is by no means surprising that Kant’s first critics,[1020] puzzled and bewildered by the obscurer and more difficult portions of the _Critique_, should have based their interpretation of Kant’s general position largely upon the above passages; and that in combining the extreme subjective idealism which Kant there advocates with his doctrine that the inner life of ever-changing experiences is itself merely ideal, should have come to the conclusion that Kant’s position is an extension of that of Berkeley. Pistorius objected that in making outer appearances relative to an inner consciousness which is itself appearance, Kant is reducing everything to mere illusion. Hamann came to the somewhat similar conclusion, that Kant, notwithstanding his very different methods of argument, is “a Prussian Hume,” in substantial agreement with his Scotch predecessor.

II. =“Prolegomena,” Section 13, Notes II and III.=--In the _Prolegomena_ Kant replies to the criticism which the first edition of the _Critique_ had called forth, that his position is an extension of the idealism of Descartes, and even more thoroughgoing than that of Berkeley. Idealism he redefines in a much narrower sense, which makes it applicable only to Berkeley

“...as consisting in the assertion that there are none but thinking
beings, and that all other things which we suppose ourselves to
perceive in intuition are nothing but representations in the
thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in
fact.”[1021]

In reply Kant affirms his unwavering belief in the reality of _Dinge an sich_

“...which though quite unknown to us as to what they are in
themselves, we yet know by the representations which their
influence on our sensibility procures us.... Can this be termed
idealism? It is the very contrary.”[1022]

Kant adds that his position is akin to that of Locke, differing only in his assertion of the subjectivity of the primary as well as of the secondary qualities.

“I should be glad to know what my assertions ought to have been in
order to avoid all idealism. I suppose I ought to have said, not
only that the representation of space is perfectly conformable to
the relation which our sensibility has to objects (for that I have
said), but also that it is completely similar to them--an assertion
in which I can find as little meaning as if I said that the
sensation of red has a similarity to the property of cinnabar which
excites this sensation in me.”[1023]

Kant is here very evidently using the term idealism in the narrowest possible meaning, as representing only the position of Berkeley, and as excluding that of Descartes and Leibniz. Such employment of the term is at variance with his own previous usage. Though idealism here corresponds to the “dogmatic idealism” of A 377, it is now made to concern the assertion or denial of things in themselves, not as previously the problem of the reality of material objects and of space. Kant is also ignoring the fact, which he more than once points out in the _Critique_, that his philosophy cannot prove that the cause of our sensations is without and not within us. His use of “body”[1024] as a name for the thing in itself is likewise without justification. This passage is mainly polemical; it is hardly more helpful than the criticism to which it was designed to reply.

In Section 13, Note iii., Kant meets the still more extreme criticism (made by Pistorius), that his system turns all the things of the world into mere illusion (_Schein_). He distinguishes transcendental idealism from “the mystical and visionary idealism of Berkeley” on the one hand, and on the other from the Cartesian idealism which would convert mere representations into things in themselves. To obviate the ambiguities of the term transcendental, he declares that his own idealism may perhaps more fitly be entitled Critical. This distinction between mystical and Critical idealism connects with the contents of the second part of the Appendix, treated below.

III. =“Prolegomena,” Section 49.=--This is simply a repetition of the argument of the fourth _Paralogism_. The Cartesian idealism, now (as in B 274) named material idealism, is alone referred to. The Cartesian idealism does nothing, Kant says, but distinguish external experience from dreaming. There is here again the same confusing use of the term “corresponds.”

“That something actual without us not only corresponds but must
correspond to our external perceptions can likewise be
proved....”[1025]

IV. =“Prolegomena,” Second Part of the Appendix.=--Kant here returns to the distinction, drawn in Section 13, Note iii., between what he now calls “idealism proper (_eigentlicher_),”[1026] _i.e._ visionary or mystical idealism, and his own.

“The position of all genuine idealists from the Eleatics to Bishop
Berkeley is contained in this formula: ‘All cognition through the
senses and experience is nothing but mere illusion, and only in the
ideas of pure understanding and Reason is there truth.’ The
fundamental principle ruling all my idealism, on the contrary, is
this: ‘All cognition of things solely from pure understanding or
pure Reason is nothing but mere illusion and only in experience is
there truth.’”[1027]

This mode of defining idealism can, in this connection, cause nothing but confusion. Its inapplicability to Berkeley would seem to prove that Kant had no first-hand knowledge of Berkeley’s writings.[1028] As Kant’s Note to the Appendix to the _Prolegomena_[1029] shows, he also had Plato in mind. But the definition given of “the fundamental principle” of his own idealism is almost equally misleading. It omits the all-essential point, that for Kant experience itself yields truth only by conforming to _a priori_ concepts. As it is, he proceeds to criticise Berkeley for failure to supply a sufficient criterion of distinction between truth and illusion. Such criterion, he insists, is necessarily _a priori_. The Critical idealism differs from that of Berkeley in maintaining that space and time, though sensuous, are _a priori_, and that in combination with the pure concepts of understanding they

“...prescribe _a priori_ its law to all possible experience: the
law which at the same time yields the sure criterion for
distinguishing within experience truth from illusion. My so-called
idealism--which properly speaking is Critical idealism--is thus
quite peculiar in that it overthrows ordinary idealism, and that
through it all _a priori_ cognition, even that of geometry, now
attains objective reality, a thing which even the keenest realist
could not assert till I had proved the ideality of space and
time.”[1030]

V. =Sections added in Second Edition at the Conclusion of the Aesthetic.= (B 69 ff.)--Kant here again replies to the criticism of Pistorius that all existence has been reduced to the level of illusion (_Schein_). His defence is twofold: first, that in naming objects appearances he means to indicate that they are independently grounded, or, as he states it, are “something actually given.” If we _mis_interpret them, the result is indeed illusion, but the fault then lies with ourselves and not with the appearances as presented. Secondly, he argues that the doctrine of the ideality of space and time is the only secure safeguard against scepticism. For otherwise the contradictions which result from regarding space and time as independently real will likewise hold of their contents, and everything, including even our own existence, will be rendered illusory. “The good Berkeley [observing these contradictions] cannot, indeed, be blamed for reducing bodies to mere illusion.” This last sentence may perhaps be taken as supporting the view that notwithstanding the increased popularity of Berkeley in Germany and the appearance of new translations in these very years, Kant has not been sufficiently interested to acquire first-hand knowledge of Berkeley’s writings.[1031] The epithet employed is characteristic of the rather depreciatory attitude which Kant invariably adopts in speaking of Berkeley.

VI. =“Refutation of Idealism” in Second Edition of the “Critique.”= (B 274-9, supplemented by note to B xxxix.).--The refutation opens by equating idealism with material idealism (so named in contradistinction to his own “formal or rather Critical” teaching). Within material idealism Kant distinguishes between the problematic idealism of Descartes, and the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley. The latter has, he says, been overthrown in the _Aesthetic_. The former alone is dealt with in this refutation. This is the first occurrence in the _Critique_ of the expression “problematic idealism”: it is nowhere employed in the first edition.[1032] Problematic idealism consists in the assertion that we are incapable of having experience of any existence save our own; only our inner states are immediately apprehended; all other existences are determined by inference from them. The refutation consists in the proof that we have experience, and not mere imagination of outer objects. This is proved by showing that inner experience, unquestioned by Descartes, is possible only on the assumption of outer experience, and that this latter is as immediate and direct as is the former.

=Thesis.=--The empirically determined consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.[1033]

=Proof.=--I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time. Time determination presupposes the perception of something permanent. But nothing permanent is intuitable in the empirical self. On the cognitive side (_i.e._ omitting feelings, etc., which in this connection are irrelevant), it consists solely of representations; and these demand a permanent, distinct from ourselves, in relation to which their changes, and so my own existence in the time wherein they change, may be determined.[1034] Thus perception of this permanent is only possible through a thing outside, and not through the mere representation of a thing outside. And the same must hold true of the determination of my existence in time, since this also depends upon the apprehension of the permanent. That is to say, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate awareness of the existence of other things outside me.

In the note to the _Preface_ to the second edition[1035] occurs the following emphatic statement.

“Representation of something permanent in existence is not the same
as permanent representation. For though the representation [of the
permanent] may be very changing and variable like all our other
representations, not excepting those of matter, it yet refers to
something permanent. This latter must therefore be an external
thing distinct from all my representations, and its existence must
be included in the determination of my own existence, constituting
with it but a single experience such as would not take place even
internally if it were not also at the same time, in part, external.
How this should be possible we are as little capable of explaining
further as we are of accounting for our being able to think the
abiding in time, the coexistence of which with the variable
generates the conception of change.”

The argument of this note varies from that of B 274 ff. only in its use of an ambiguous expression which is perhaps capable of being taken as referring to things in themselves, but which does not seem to have that meaning. “I am just as certainly conscious that there are things outside me which relate to my sense....”

In B 277-8 Kant refers to the empirical fact that determination of time can be made only by relation to outer happenings in space, such as the motion of the sun. This is a point which is further developed in another passage which Kant added in the second edition.

“...in order to understand the possibility of things in conformity
with the categories, and so to demonstrate the objective reality of
the latter, we need not merely intuitions, but intuitions that are
in all cases outer intuitions. When, for instance, we take the pure
concepts of relation, we find firstly that in order to obtain
something _permanent_ in intuition corresponding to the concept of
substance, and so to demonstrate the objective reality of this
concept, we require an intuition in space (of matter). For space
alone is determined as permanent, while time, and therefore
everything that is in inner sense, is in constant flux. Secondly,
in order to exhibit _change_ as the intuition corresponding to the
concept of _causality_, we must take as our example motion, _i.e._
change in space. Only in this way can we obtain the intuition of
changes, the possibility of which can never be comprehended through
any pure understanding. For change is combination of
contradictorily opposed determinations in the existence of one and
the same thing. Now how it is possible that from a given state of a
thing an opposite state should follow, not only cannot be conceived
by any reason without an example, but is actually incomprehensible
to reason without intuition. The intuition required is the
intuition of the movement of a point in space. The presence of the
point in different spaces (as a sequence of opposite
determinations) is what first yields to us an intuition of change.
For in order that we may afterwards make inner changes likewise
thinkable, we must represent time (the form of inner sense)
figuratively as a line, and the inner change through the drawing of
this line (motion), and so in this manner by means of outer
intuition make comprehensible the successive existence of
ourselves in different states. The reason of this is that all
change, if it is indeed to be perceived as change, presupposes
something permanent in intuition, and that in inner sense no
permanent intuition is to be met with. Lastly, the possibility of
the category of _community_ cannot be comprehended through mere
reason alone. Its objective reality is not to be understood without
intuition and indeed outer intuition in space.”[1036]

In this passage Kant is modifying the teaching of the first edition in two very essential respects. In the first place, he is now asserting that consciousness of both space and motion is necessary to consciousness of time;[1037] and in the second place, he is maintaining that the _categories_ can acquire meaning only by reference to outer appearances. Had Kant made all the necessary alterations which these new positions involve, he would, as we shall find,[1038] have had entirely to recast the chapters on _Schematism_ and on the _Principles of Understanding_. Kant was not, however, prepared to make such extensive alterations, and these chapters are therefore left practically unmodified. This is one of the many important points in which the reader is compelled to reinterpret passages of earlier date in the light of Kant’s later utterances. There is also a further difficulty. Does Kant, in maintaining that the categories can _acquire_ significance only in reference to outer perception, also mean to assert that their subsequent employment is limited to the mechanical world of the material sciences? This is a point in regard to which Kant makes no quite direct statement; but indirectly he would seem to indicate that that was not his intention.[1039] He frequently speaks of the states of inner sense as mechanically conditioned. Sensations,[1040] feelings, and desires,[1041] are, he would seem to assert, integral parts of the unitary system of phenomenal existence. Such a view is not, indeed, easily reconcilable with his equating of the principle of substance with the principle of the conservation of matter.[1042] There are here two conflicting positions which Kant has failed to reconcile: the traditional dualistic attitude of Cartesian physics and the quite opposite implications of his Critical phenomenalism. When the former is being held to, Kant has to maintain that psychology can never become a science;[1043] but his Critical teaching consistently developed seems rather to support the view that psychology, despite special difficulties peculiar to its subject matter, can be developed on lines strictly analogous to those of the material sciences.

We may now return to Kant’s main argument. This new refutation of idealism in the second edition differs from that given in the fourth _Paralogism_ of the first edition, not only in method of argument but also in the nature of the conclusion which it seeks to establish. Indeed it proves the _direct opposite_ of what is asserted in the first edition. The earlier proof sought to show that, as regards immediacy of apprehension and subjectivity of existence, outer appearances stand on the same level as do our inner experiences. The proof of the second edition, on the other hand, argues that though outer appearances are immediately apprehended they must be existences distinct from the subjective states through which the mind represents them. The two arguments agree, indeed, in establishing immediacy, but as that which is taken as immediately known is in the one case a subjective state and in the other is an independent existence, the immediacy calls in the two cases for entirely different methods of proof. The first method consisted in viewing outer experiences as a subdivision within our inner experiences. The new method views their relation as not that of including and included, but of conditioning and conditioned; and it is now to outer experience that the primary position is assigned. So far is outer experience from being possible only as part of inner experience, that on the contrary inner experience, consciousness of the flux of inner states, is only possible in and through experience of independent material bodies in space. A sentence from each proof will show how completely their conclusions are opposed.