Transcendental Idealism and Beyond:

Kant’s “Theater of the Mind”[Part Three]

Ken Foldes

Fulbright Scholar

Published by The Da Vinci Center Press, New YorkAll rights reserved

Que la tyrannie de l’Objet cesse!Mort a l’Objet! –Vive l’esprit!

Que le reine eternelle de la liberte commence!

No, great man, you who are of such importance for the human race, your work will not perish! It will bear rich fruits. It will give mankind a fresh impetus; it will bring about a total rebirth of man’s first principles, opinions, and ways of thinking. Believe me, there is nothing which will be unaffected by the consequences of your work, and your discoveries have joyous prospects. … Oh great and good man, what must it be like toward the end of one’s earthly life to be able to have such feelings as you can have! I confess that the thought of your example will always be my guide and will impel me not to retire from the stage before I have been of some use to mankind, to the extent that it lies within my power to be of such use.

Fichte to Kant, 9-20-17931

1 Early Philosophical Writings, p. 365. Tr. D. Breazeale (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).

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Transcendental Idealism and Beyond: Kant’s “Theater of the Mind”

Chapter Four: THE CRITICS: THE TRANSCENDENTAL REALISTS 112

4.1. H.E. Allison 116, P.F. Strawson 137, Walker 149, Findlay 151, Bohme 157, Sherover and Srzednicki 156, 306, and Waxman 157

4.2. Sallis, J.S. Beck, Fichte, and R.P. Wolff 1594.3. Common Objections 1634.4. Final Assessment of Kant and His Critics 164

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KANT’S “THEATRE OF THE MIND”

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CRITICS: THE “TRANSCENDENTAL REALISTS

A number of events have convinced the author of these letters that, in the minds of quite a few of the true friends of critical philosophy, there is as yet no sharp enough determination of the boundaries which the Critique of Pure Reason drew between dogmatism and criticism. Unless the author is mistaken, a new system of dogmatism is about to be fashioned of the spoils captured by critical philosophy.

F.W.J. Schelling, Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism2

How, then, is the doctrine that bodies are but a species of representations to be reconciled with the doctrine that we are immediately conscious of the existence of objects in space distinct from our perceptions?

P.F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense3

I have shown through a close examination of key texts of the Critique that it appears undeniably to be the teaching of transcendental idealism that the spatial, extended, sensible, material object of experience can in no way be separated from the cognitive faculty. That certain Kant scholars even speak of a “weighty” object, i.e. of the experiential object as capable of such independent existence, clearly betrays the fact that they have not understood the Critique’s central problematic and the solution it provides and thus, as I would argue, that they are enmeshed in one form or another of what Kant calls the delusion of “transcendental realism.”

It is to be recalled that the Critique’s central problem is to show how a priori knowledge of experiential objects is possible. Kant’s unique solution to it is provided precisely by his Aesthetic and Analytic and the special interconnection of sensibility and understanding. It is critical to recognize that as long as experiential objects are regarded as self-subsistent “things in themselves” and thus as having a being independently or in separation from the cognitive faculty or subject, an a priori knowledge of them becomes a sheer impossibility. In fact, even an “a posteriori” knowledge of them is made impossible to the extent that they are separated from and posited as out of relation with the knower, a knowledge only of their effect on us, via a copy or re-presentation of them, being (apparently) possible.

Thus Kant’s first step is to prove that the objects of experience (of knowledge) in truth are not things in themselves but only appearances, i.e., entities whose being and properties exist only in

2.See Schelling’s Of the I, Marti 105f, 119n. 3. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense 259.

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relation to the knower and which are nothing at all apart from the same. He believes to have accomplished this first task by having proved that space and time, and thus everything in space and time, are only forms of our intuition and hence have no being in themselves or are ideal. This was the job of the Aesthetic. With the change in the object of knowledge, however, a new problem arose which had to be solved, viz. that of replacing a lost “objectivity,” or of re-introducing objectivity into what is now completely subjective, i.e., appearances or representations are not independently existing things, rather “mere modifications or determinations of the subject,” of its “power of representation.” That is to say, the Aesthetic’s result is that the objects of experience, now understood to be mere appearances or representations/modifications of the mind or cognitive faculty, have thereby acquired a subjective cast. With this change we are forced to abandon our old notion of an “object” as something which exists independently of ourselves and having a being in itself—appearances have a being, but only for us.

The problem now becomes: Can we come up with a new and different kind of objectivity, an “immanent” objectivity to take the place of the previous “transcendent” objectivity hitherto prevailing in philosophy and the sciences and which the argument of the Aesthetic has forced us to abandon? Can objectivity be introduced into our subjective representations? Can we re-define or -construe objectivity perhaps in terms of “necessity” and “universality,” in terms of a necessary ordering of our representations according to “rules” or categories in our mind? The problem is crucial, for if it cannot be solved we will have to abandon science altogether.

The task of the Analytic—of the Concepts and Principles—is that of solving this and no other problem. Simply expressed this is Kant’s solution: Subjective appearances exist only in sensibility. Sensibility as pure receptivity is unable of itself to unify, connect and relate any of its contents. Moreover, without unity and necessary connection among our subjective representations there can be no “objectivity” and no knowledge of objects. Understanding, however, as pure spontaneity and activity, as pure apperception, ceaselessly active in combining and synthesizing the sensible manifold, is uniquely suited to this task. Thus, the source of the new, immanent objectivity the Aesthetic has made necessary will be precisely the thought, categories and principles which constitute the understanding, and in this way the problem of a priori knowledge as well will be solved.

Thus, all the objectivity, i.e. unity and necessary connection, one finds within experience must be recognized as having been put there or as having its source exclusively and necessarily in the understanding and its pure a priori categories and “acts.” This is precisely because experience is not, as the Aesthetic has established, of things in themselves (self-subsistent beings) but of appearances (Erscheinungen) existing only in our sensibility, a sensibility wholly lacking in a power of synthesizing—unifying and combining—its diverse contents. Thus: No a priori categories, No objectivity in experience. This means that the categories are valid a priori of objects of experience since it is only by means of them that there can even be objects of experience, i.e. connection and unity in experience and among our representations.

I should also point out, what is the truly brilliant feature of Kant’s analysis, that it is only by acknowledging the ideality of experiential objects, i.e. their status as appearance, that reality is guaranteed and secured for them. It is only if I regard this intuited spatial material physical desk before me as incapable of an existence independently of my intuition, hence as the only desk before me, that I can be certain of being in contact with the reality and not with its mere copy or representation. As soon as I regard it as having a being of its own and out of relation with my intuition, I cease to be in touch with or perceive the reality or the real desk and, by “doubling” the given (the object, intuition), am constrained to regard my perception as a mere “effect” of it, i.e. a

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re-presentation of it; the desk in experience then comes to have empirical “ideality” instead of empirical reality. It is the failure to get perfectly clear on this point that is responsible for many of the misunderstandings of Kant’s teaching—(thus it may be true that “Kant is to this day still a closed book,” in Fichte’s words, I,420)—and for the resulting lapse into transcendental realism stemming from an ungrounded fear of “subjectivism.” The irony is that subjectivism—i.e. true or “objective” subjectivism—is the only means to guarantee and secure reality and objectivity.

To put the matter simply, the critics whom I will be examining hold it to be Kant’s view, at least on occasion, that the perceptual spatial object is able to exist as such in independence of the cognitive faculty, i.e. they find an object in the “weighty” sense to inhabit the texts of the Critique of Pure Reason. But one has seen that to the degree the object of experience has independent existence, no a priori knowledge can be had of it. In fact, no knowledge whatsoever can be had of it since an object so regarded is indistinguishable or identical with a “thing in itself,” as lying outside the reach of the cognitive faculty. Such an object would fly in the face of the Critique’s main purpose—showing that and how a priori knowledge of experiential objects is possible. How could Kant be guilty of such a gross inconsistency? The main point of the Aesthetic is to show that the objects of experience are appearances only and not, as is universally believed, things (capable of existing) in themselves. My textual analysis has clearly shown that an “appearance,” in accordance with transcendental idealism, is nothing in itself and incapable of an existence apart from experience and the cognitive faculty. In essence, these interpreters are saying, as regards to one and the same appearance, that “part” of it has a being only for us and in us, while another distinct “part” of the same appearance has a being of its own, in itself and apart from us. If this were true, as I noted, then no a priori knowledge of the part of the appearance which had an independent existence would be possible and one would be sent back to a pre-critical standpoint. No, one can only be said to possess a priori knowledge of the object in the case where it is the whole object of which one has knowledge, where the object is one and entire, and the appearance absolutely immanent and ideal vis-a-vis the cognitive faculty and not in any way transcendent or transcendentally real.

Therefore, the focal question in my treatment of these what can be called “realist” or “weighty object” critics will be: Given the fact that to view an appearance as able to exist in part or in toto separately from the cognitive faculty is to undermine the central aim of the Critique, what are the specific reasons—if any—which led these scholars to such a reading of Kant’s text.

Perhaps one reason is these interpreters’ inability to overcome their “dogmatism,” which the Critique requires, i.e. the ingrained, natural tendency to regard sense objects as things in themselves instead of as appearances, as beings in themselves instead of as beings for consciousness merely. This hard-to-eradicate belief, as Kant and the other idealists often remark upon, leads them to carry into the book an “independently existing object” or an object in the “weighty” sense. This prejudices their reading of the work and as a result impairs their grasp of Kant’s new version of objectivity which is vital for an understanding of the solution to his general problematic. In effect, they read the work with two different objects before them, the old object and the new object, and thus end up with a highly confused Kant who is held to espouse, as Schelling observes, a mixture or “patchwork” of transcendental idealism and transcendental realism.

Another reason these interpreters incline towards a “weighty object” reading of appearance in the text, as Henry Allison indicates in the introduction of his book, is their desire to avoid the “subjectivism” which seems to be reflected in the “standard picture” of Kant’s philosophy. The “standard picture,” which does away with the object in the weighty sense, does in fact reflect Kant’s true position when properly construed. Allison and P.F. Strawson, for example, both believe that the transference of “the entire spatiotemporal framework” to the subject and the identification of

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space with intuition can only result in an extreme and objectionable subjectivism. They hold that not to give appearances some kind of existence independent of the cognitive subject and its faculties (apperception, sensibility) would deprive our cognitions of all objectivity and reality and lead to an extreme phenomenalism, leaving us a commerce only with our own “mental contents” or subjective ideas or representations. As one has seen however, the very opposite is the case. It is only if one denies that the immediate objects before us have an independent existence or a being in themselves that one can be certain one is in contact with and is experiencing or knowing the real thing, reality itself, and not a mere subjective copy, surrogate, effect, impression or representation of the real physical object. It is only if space and extension are one and the same with our intuition or sensibility, if there is no “gap” or divorce between the two, that one can be said to have experience of matter itself and not of a copy or derivative of it. As Kant says:

The transcendental realist thus interprets outer appearances (their reality being taken for granted) as things-in-themselves, which exist independently of us and of our sensibility, and which are therefore outside us … It is, in fact, this transcendental realist who afterwards plays the part of empirical idealist. After wrongly supposing that objects of the senses, if they are to be external, must have an existence by themselves, and independently of the senses, he finds that, judged from this point of view, all our sensuous representations are inadequate to establish their reality. A369

It is only if one views sense objects as having an existence by themselves that, in thus “doubling” the object, one deprives oneself of immediate access to the object itself, the original, and becomes needlessly involved in representational theories of perception and knowledge. Transcendental idealism thus is the only standpoint which yields realism, and the only realism possible. The moment one ascribes independent being to the sense object—and thus become a transcendental realist instead of an empirical realist—its reality is lost and it becomes a copy of something “behind” or “beyond” it.

Moreover, is it any wonder that after styling Kantian appearance a “weighty object” and as something having an existence completely separate from the cognitive faculty they all return a negative verdict on the transcendental deduction? As all know, it is impossible to have a priori knowledge of a thing in itself, of something posited as existing independently of the cognitive faculty. It seems obvious that they completely missed the point of the Aesthetic. Why would Kant have gone to all that trouble in the Aesthetic to prove that appearances are not things in themselves, if in the end they really are things in themselves after all, having a being independently of sensibility? This is ludicrous. It is only if objects of experience are in truth appearances that the transcendental deduction of the categories can work at all, that the a priori validity of the categories for experience can be demonstrated. Thus another reason for their saddling Kant with a “weighty object” would be their failure to grasp the key methodological connection between the Aesthetic and the Analytic and the crucial role each plays in the solution of his problematic. Strawson among others charges Kant with inconsistency in that he both asserts and denies the object of perception to exist independently of the cognitive subject. He finds both an “austere” and a “transcendental idealist” Kant. It will be seen that Kant is in fact consistent and is a transcendental idealist throughout the Critique.

Finally, there is the textual evidence to which the critics point as supportive of their weighty object reading of Kant. It will turn out that they have misinterpreted the texts in question. In fact it will be seen that Kant is quite consistent in maintaining throughout his work the new interpretation

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of objectivity and the object in terms of immanent necessary connection—nowhere does one find mention of an appearance as an “independently existing object.” It also should be stated that aside from alleged textual evidence the critics offer very little argumentation for their weighty object thesis. They pretty much assume it as granted and simply take it into the Critique with them.

This section of my thesis will have five parts: 4.1 will critique the Kant interpretations of H. Allison, P.F. Strawson, R.S.C. Walker, W.Waxman, J.N. Findlay, G. Bohme, C. Sherover and J. Srzednicki. 4.2 will treat of the superior readings of Kant by J.S. Beck, Fichte, J. Sallis and R.P. Wolff. 4.3 will treat “common sense” objections to my reading. 4.4 will discuss the real origin of the deception of dogmatism (a la Fichte and Schelling), and the point that the “literal” Kant is in large measure a transitional figure, mediating between the old and the new philosophy, and thus there is a need to go beyond Kant to give “systematic form” to his central vision.

4.1. H.E. AllisonThe chief error of Allison’s interpretation of Kant as contained in his monograph, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, is rooted in his erroneous opinion that the only way to avoid the “subjectivism” attaching to the standard interpretation of transcendental idealism, which (rightly) assigns the entire spatiotemporal framework to the cognitive subject, is to ascribe to the object of experience some sort of independent existence apart from the cognitive faculties, i.e. to read a “weighty object” into the text. As noted this move, by which appearances are construed as things in themselves having a self-subsistent existence apart from the subject and its faculty of representation, results in the position Kant stigmatizes as “transcendental realism (B519)” and as well foredooms the transcendental deduction to failure, as one cannot have a priori knowledge of what is initially posited as distinct from the cognitive subject. Having made this false assumption Allison strives valiantly to make sense of and rescue Kant’s (defensible) Deduction and overall arguments but cannot, as he has not grasped the key inner connection between the Aesthetic and the Analytic. Like the other commentators he operates in the Critique with two contradictory notions of an object, i.e. the old “independent of representation” object and the new critical “immanent” object.

First, I will examine and comment upon his introductory chapters where he voices his concern to avoid the “subjectivism” attaching to the “standard picture” of transcendental idealism; then, I will consider his reasons for holding the transcendental deduction not to work and show that they are ill founded as they rest on the false assumption of a “weighty object”; and lastly, I shall indicate other texts of his which clearly show he has misconstrued Kant’s teaching and how his reading can be corrected.

The “Standard Picture” and Subjectivism. The opening passages of Allison’s book indicate a basic confusion at the foundation of his analysis. It is clear that the primary motive behind his new interpretation of transcendental idealism, as he himself says, is to correct the “standard picture” of Kant’s position and to obviate the devastating criticisms which attend it (pages 1-5). According to this picture Kant is said to hold that “Reality is supersensible and we can have no knowledge of it. We know only of our ‘subjective’ representations (mental contents) or ‘mere’ appearances of Reality”—or differently expressed, we can only know things as they “seem to us” and not as they “really are.” Apparently, what Allison finds objectionable regarding this view is that it is

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“subjectivistic.” He wants to claim as against this that for Kant our knowledge is “objective” and concerns “reality” and not merely the “appearance” of reality. The confusion I referred to concerns the way he proposes to overcome subjectivism.

According to Allison, Kant’s key terminological distinctions are to be interpreted as follows. Concerning “ideality” and “reality”: According to Allison, “ideality” signifies “mind dependence or being in the mind (in uns),” while “reality” signifies “independence of mind or being external to the mind (ausser uns) (pp. 6-7).” Concerning ideality and reality in the “empirical sense”: “Empirical ideality” signifies “the private data of an individual mind” and pertains to “any mental content in the ordinary sense of `mental’.” “Empirical reality” refers to “the intersubjectively accessible spatiotemporally ordered realm of objects of human experience.” Thus, he says, the distinction refers here mainly to the difference “between the subjective and objective aspects of human experience.” He sums up his construal in the following important statement:

When Kant claims that he is an empirical realist and denies that he is an empirical idealist, he is really affirming that our experience is not limited to the private domain of our own representations, but includes an encounter with “empirically real” spatiotemporal objects. (p. 7)

Concerning ideality and reality in the “transcendental sense”: “Transcendental ideality” refers to “the universal, necessary, and, therefore, a priori conditions of human knowledge,” namely, space and time. Things in space and time are “transcendentally ideal” for the reason that “they cannot be experienced or described independently of these sensible conditions.” “Transcendental reality” then would signify that which “can be characterized and referred to independently of any appeal to these same sensible conditions.” He adds that, “In the transcendental sense, then, mind independence or being external to the mind (ausser uns) means independence of sensibility and its conditions.” Allison then proceeds to apply these determinations to the famous contrast between “appearances and things in themselves” by way of distinguishing between a transcendental and empirical version of this contrast, this is his most important strategic distinction.

Thus it is Allison’s view that appearance acquires a “subjective” cast only when contrasted with a Thing in itself, regarded as Reality. But if one takes the appearance/thing-in-itself distinction to be one referring not to two distinct entities (or types of entities) but rather to one and the same thing (viz. a physical thing) viewed merely from different aspects—as “appearance” when considered as in relation to the subject’s “epistemic conditions,” and as “thing in itself” when not—then the “subjective” connotation drops away from appearance. That is, our knowledge is of physical things, the only reality, but as conditioned by us; moreover it is senseless to ask what physical things are like apart from these “epistemic conditions” (space, time, categories) - also the charge of skepticism with regard to the unknowability of “things in themselves” is considerably mitigated, as these are not a second set of entities to which one would be denied access. So far, so good; and it must be said Allison is to be commended for showing that most of the mistakes of Prichard and Strawson concerning the appearance vs reality problematic can be avoided by attending closely to Kant’s remarks about the important distinctions involved in “transcendental”-”empirical” and “ideality”-”reality”.

At this point however his dogmatism takes over leading him to believe that in order to secure objectivity for our knowledge it is not enough to have reduced appearance and thing in itself to a single object (viz., appearance) albeit differently viewed, and an object which one is in immediate contact with. He feels appearance must in addition be attributed with some kind of

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independent existence. Here his argument becomes unintelligible and the concept of a “weighty object” makes its appearance. That is to say, an appearance, the only object that exists, is construed as having a “double” existence, i.e. it is at the same time both in relation to us and not in relation to us (as existing on its own account and distinct from its representation),. Or, there is the appearance “as such” and the appearance “as represented.” Consider the following passage which reflects this confusion:

Unfortunately, much of this is obscured by Kant’s tendency to refer to the objects of human experience not only as “appearances” but also as “mere representations.” The latter locution in particular, which is extremely frequent in Kant, is mainly responsible for the standard picture. Nevertheless, even here careful attention to the text suffices to raise serious questions about the correctness of this picture. Consider, for example, the characterization of transcendental idealism to which Kant appended the abovementioned note. We saw earlier that Kant there describes transcendental idealism as the doctrine that “everything intuited in space and time, and therefore all objects of any experience possible to us, are nothing but appearances, that is, mere representations, which, in the manner in which they are represented, as extended beings, or as series of alterations, have no independent existence outside our thoughts.” The equation of appearances with “mere representations” in the main clause certainly suggests the standard picture. In the subordinate clause, however, Kant effectively undercuts any such reading by indicating that the characterization of appearances as “mere representations” must be understood to refer to “the manner in which they are represented.” The claim, therefore, is not that objects have no independent existence (as one might maintain with regard to Berkeleian ideas or the sense data of the phenomenalists); it is rather that such [independent] existence cannot be attributed to them “in the manner in which they are represented.”

Allison’s aim is to avoid a subjectivistic reading of Kant’s text and do this through the old concept of an object, i.e. he wants to claim that for Kant the object has some kind of independent existence. Thus he contends Kant is saying that objects have no independent existence only qua represented (“in the manner in which they are represented”). He obviously says this to leave open the possibility of their having an independent existence in another respect—also recall, he wants to avoid the reduction, a la Prichard, of physical things to mere “subjective” representations.

However, this will not do, for objects are physical, extended, and spatiotemporal only in virtue of their manner of representation—recall that for Allison there is only one thing present, the physical thing, not two; appearance and thing in itself are not two distinct things but instead two ways of regarding one and the same physical thing (cf. 8 and 239). Hence the object viewed apart from the way it is represented (if it can be so viewed) is non- physical, -extended, -spatiotemporal (as Kant definitely holds) and is thus the same as a noumenon or thing in itself. Consequently, it is only as a non-physical, etc., thing in itself that objects of experience can be said to have independent existence outside our thoughts or representations; objects as physical and extended have no such existence. Therefore Allison still has on his hands a subjectivistic Berkeleyan Kant—precisely what he went to all this trouble to avoid.

Obviously since this does not work Allison will have another strategy, his main one, for “saving” Kant’s transcendental idealism from a subjectivistic reading, one equally inadequate. Namely, instead of “representation” being construed as coextensive with “appearance” (or “object of experience”), what was premissed in the argument just examined and what in fact is Kant’s

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position, since the object is intuition, which is representation, he now separates the two. Representation is not the same as appearance, rather representation is construed as representation of appearance. That is, representation pertains only to “inner sense” (not to “outer sense” as well), while appearance alone inhabits “outer sense.” Or, appearance is now conceived as utterly distinct and independent of representation. This move will give him trouble in interpreting the transcendental deduction causing him to claim it fails, seeing that it is impossible to have a priori knowledge of an object initially posited as distinct and independent, i.e. as a “weighty object.” Allison also makes a parallel disjunction between perception and appearance (and more importantly between perception and experience as well), perception similarly occupying inner sense only and not reaching also to appearance in outer sense, i.e., the physical thing itself, e.g. a house or auto.

There are two problems of course with this move. First, it is impossible to see how perception can be confined to inner sense. For example, when I perceive the moon, I discover no “line” or “demarcation” separating outer from inner sense. My perception is of the moon itself, it fully reaches and inhabits outer sense, and this because my perception—if one has understood the Aesthetic—is itself spatial, not merely temporal, since as “intuition” it involves the a priori forms of both space and time. Indeed, Kant clearly says in both the Refutation of Idealism and the Paralogisms that I perceive directly and immediately outer material-spatial objects, i.e. that I am through perception in direct contact with extended, material, physical appearances (and this is the basis for my asserting their existence). Perception according to Kant and contrary to Allison’s reading of him, clearly extends to and embraces (indeed is one with) outer sense and the objects or appearances in outer sense. By his insisting on a distinction or separation between perception/representation and appearance Allison is forced to adopt transcendental realism: since through perception I am no longer in immediate contact with the physical-spatial thing (appearance) itself but only with its copy or re-presentation, the only way I can know of the appearance is by inference from the representation to the represented. The solution of course is that for Kant there is a perfect congruence or identity between perception/representation and physical, spatial, extended appearances, for as the Aesthetic has taught perception or sensible intuition involves spatiality, temporality, and extension (in contradistinction to Cartesian, Analytic and other pre- and post- Kantian theories of perception), and matter and bodies (“filled space”) is similarly for Kant a “species of our representations,” i.e. is reducible to representation and thus is nothing in itself and outside our sensibility. As noted, it is only by denying to matter, physical appearances, objects of experience, a being in themselves in addition to the being they have for us or in experience—and in this lies Kant’s genius—can one be certain that one is in touch with reality (the reality of matter and its real properties) and not with merely its copy or “representation,” in the pejorative sense. Indeed, it is transcendental idealism, or ideality alone that guarantees the reality of the objects of experience; only by resisting transcendental realism, i.e., the temptation to attribute an independent existence to physical objects, can one avoid being an empirical idealist who deprives experiential objects of their reality.

Second, Allison falls into the trap of other Anglo-American interpreters who have yet to discern the crucial methodological interconnection of the Aesthetic and the Analytic. He assumes without warrant that appearances belonging to or found in our sensibility have the nature and character of “objects,” i.e. have unity and connection or can be objects, even apart from and prior to understanding’s (the I’s) contribution to experience. The Aesthetic, it will be recalled, taught that experiential objects are not “things in themselves” but appearances, which are nothing in themselves and cannot exist outside our sensibility. As such and as belonging to the strictly receptive part of our representing faculty, they lack all unity, connection and combination (as well as “necessary

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connection,” what alone can constitute the “new” objectivity), and hence are utterly dependent for this on understanding, i.e. on apperception’s and imagination’s power of production, unification and synthesis.

Thus, with the Aesthetic’s shift from things in themselves to appearances goes the need to shift from the old to a “new” concept of objectivity. Object’s are no longer to be considered independent and self-subsistent entities, they are mere appearances (qua “conditioned”). Hence, whatever unity and connection they are to possess must derive from the subject itself. This alone and precisely is the raison d’etre for the Analytic, viz. to show how the active and spontaneous powers of the subject will provide a new kind of “immanent” objectivity for what are now known to be appearances (not “capable of existing outside our power of representation”), and thus to reveal the only way an a priori knowledge of the objects of experience is possible, such knowledge hitherto and on the old assumption—which took as granted an “independently existing object” or one which existed outside the cognitive faculty—being impossible (Bxvi, A130).

Once appearances in outer sense are invested with an objectivity of their own and it is held that perception does not extend to outer sense then of course the transcendental deduction does not succeed and in no way can the categories be linked to “weighty” objects in outer sense, since these are regarded as “distinct” from perception whereas the Deduction is only able to link the pure concepts to perception inner sense. A priori synthetic knowledge of experiential objects via the categories is possible only if there is one objectivity, that provided by the categories. Appearances become objects or have an “objective” (necessary and universal) character only as a result of the operation of the categories (and apperception), and have no objectivity whatsoever—are in no way “objects”—in independence of thought, understanding, and the categories. In view of the fact that Allison is aware that Kant advances a new “Copernican” conception of objectivity, it is surprising that he seems to miss this point.

As I said, Allison’s chief error stems from his operating with both the old and new or dogmatic and “critical” concept of an object and from his inability to overcome a dogmatism that constrains him to seek the solution to subjectivism in a distinct, independently existing object, i.e. in an object existing independently of our representative states or subjective representations. And of course, since spatiality and materiality pertain only to our representation or power of representation, his “weighty” object turns out to be (as non-spatial, -material) the same as a “thing in itself” or noumenon. Further, as will be seen, Allison is inconsistent as regards his notion of a “weighty” object, which shifts several times.

The Transcendental Deduction. Let us see now how this presumed “disjunction” of perception-representation and appearance-experience shows itself in his account of the transcendental deduction. My concern with Allison’s treatment and assessment of the Deduction will be to show that his is a “transcendental realist” reading, i.e. that he holds objects or appearances to exist “independently” of our representations (representational states) or perceptions, and in what special way it is “Realistic,” and that as the texts will be seen not to support it, must therefore be judged as a mis-reading of Kant’s superlative doctrine.

I have argued that transcendental idealism implies the following: that objects or appearances cannot be separated from or are the same as their representations hence cannot, qua spatial, temporal, material exist apart or outside of the faculty of representation (the mind); that the categories alone contain the ground for the objectivity found in experience (which we “put into it”), hence the only “object” Kant acknowledges is that generated as an outcome of joining two or more perceptions, intuitions, representations by a category in an “Act” of judgement. Let us now look at

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the precise manner in which such an “independent object distinct from representation” manifests itself in his analysis of the transcendental deduction.

According to Allison the B-Edition Deduction falls into three parts in accord with its three-fold task, namely 1. to show the “necessary connection” or link between the categories and objects in a “logical or judgemental” sense (and their “objective validity”); 2. to show the categories have a necessary connection with “perception” or the “sensible data of human intuition”; and 3. to show they are necessarily linked with “appearances” or with objects in the “weighty” sense, i.e. that they make experience possible (and their “objective reality”; cf., p. 136, 148, 158, and 171). Allison contends that the Deduction succeeds in proving 1. and 2. but fails to prove 3. I hold that Kant does in fact prove 3. in that to have proven 2. is to have proven 3. as well, since appearances are co-equal with perceptions and representations. The argument of the Deduction can be simply stated: experience is subject to the categories because the transcendental synthesis of imagination is subject to the categories and the synthesis of apprehension or perception is subject to the synthesis of imagination and therefore to the categories, categorially connected perceptions being equivalent to “experience.” It is this last equivalence between perception and experience that Allison takes issue with.

In the first place, Allison is right in claiming that Kant distinguishes between two kinds of object, a “logical” or judgemental and a “real” object or actual object of possible experience (a house, tree, or star), the former being merely formal, without relation to a determinate object or empirical intuition, the latter not lacking in empirical content. However, I feel he is mistaken in his construal of a real object or outer appearance, that is, by interpreting it as something “distinct and independent” of perception and representation, i.e. as an object in the “weighty sense,” an interpretation he apparently takes over from P.F. Strawson and other analytic interpreters of Kant.The manner in which he understands a “real object”—what he terms, following Strawson, an object in the “weighty sense”—can be gleaned from his following characterizations of it.

1] … objective validity and objective reality are connected with different conceptions of an object. Since it is linked to judgment, objective validity goes together with a judgmental or logical conception of an object. . . This is an extremely broad sense of “object,” [Objekt], which encompasses anything that can serve the subject in a judgement. . . .Correlatively, the notion of objective reality is connected with a “real” sense of object, that is, with an object in the sense of an actual entity or state of affairs (an object of possible experience). (135)

2] Much closer to the point is Strawson’s well known contrast between a very general conception of an object, which encompasses whatever can count as a particular instance of a general concept, and a “weighty” sense, which applies only to what can be said to exist independently of the occurrence of representative states. (136)

3] The other [task of the Deduction] is to show that [the categories] somehow make experience possible with experience understood as empirical knowledge of objects and an objective order distinct from perceptions and their subjective order. I argue that even under the most charitable interpretation, the Transcendental Deduction cannot be taken to have accomplished the latter task. (136)

4]. . . the apprehension of a spatial object [a house]. Kant’s choice of a “weighty” object such as a house may be misleading etc. (168)

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5] This principle applies to all objects, but it does so as a condition of their apprehension in empirical consciousness, not as a condition of the actual experience of such objects as distinct from our representations of them. . . . [the category] as a condition of the experience of an objective order of events distinct from the subjective order in which perception appears in empirical consciousness. (169)

6] The purported goal of Kant’s argument . . . is to show that we have genuine experience of “weighty” objects that are distinct from our perceptions of them. (171)

7] First, there is the object in the “weighty” sense . . . the object corresponding to, and also distinct from our representations. (244)

The problem is that it is impossible to reconcile all these accounts of a “real” or “weighty” object. For example, 1] and 4] make it clear that a “weighty” object is an object of experience, especially of outer experience, such as a “house.” This would seem to imply that we have experience of the house itself, that we are in actual contact with the house and not with a “copy” of it. Yet 7], as well as 2], 3], 5], and 6], seem to imply that we are really only in touch with “merely” our own representations or perceptions (occurring in inner sense) and not with the “weighty” object or house itself, which is posited as in some way “distinct” from them. Further, even though it occupies outer sense, it seems to be inaccessible to us, lying outside our experience, since it is regarded as “distinct from our representations” 7] and perceptions 3]. Hence it seems we know of it only by “inference” from the latter, i.e. an inference from inner to outer sense, from what occurs in inner sense to what may be presumed to occur in outer sense (sensations are, yes, in inner sense, but perception, as involving a spatial intuitional component, most definitely extends to outer sense). Apart from representation and perception we have no other cognitive means for experiencing an object. The result, is that we both have and do not have experience of, e.g., “the house itself.”

That perception according to Allison, is confined to inner sense is supported by his remark on page 167, “We can, therefore, say that perception is a mode of consciousness that has as its objects modifications of inner sense.” That we have no direct experience or intuition of a “weighty” object or an object in outer sense is supported by his remarks on page 244 and 147 concerning the two senses of an “object distinct from representations” and his (faulty) interpretation of the “transcendental object” at A104—the latter particularly sheds light on his mis-understanding of the “real” object and how he conceives the relation between representation and object in Kant.

The first sense of object “distinct” from our representations is the object in the “weighty” sense, i.e. the object “corresponding to and also distinct from our representations” (A104). This object —I find this incredible—is then identified with the “transcendental object” as a “something in general = x.” This definitely means that for Allison a “real” or “weighty” object is not directly accessible and cannot be intuited at all, since the “transcendental object” (at A104) does not admit of intuition. Furthermore, Allison is thereby committed to holding both that the “weighty” object (= transcendental object) occupies outer sense or sensibility and also that representation is confined exclusively to “inner sense.” This if further corroborated by his account of the second sense of an object “distinct” from our representations, viz. the object regarded as it is “in itself.” This object, he remarks, “is not simply considered as distinct from our representations, but also as distinct from, or independent of, the sensible conditions under which an object can alone be intuited by the human mind. As such, it is distinct from our capacity to represent objects.” This clearly implies that the

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object of the first sense, the “weighty” object, must be regarded as distinct from our representations but not also distinct from the sensible conditions of the human mind (space, time, inner and outer sense) or from our sensibility. The only way this can be conceived is by regarding our representations as pertaining to inner sense alone (since the weighty object is “distinct” from them) and the “weighty” object as pertaining to outer sense alone (since it is distinct from representations but not distinct and independent of sensibility altogether—as is the object “in itself”). When one places his remarks on page 147 beside these remarks a more accurate picture of Allison’s understanding emerges—at least the most consistent one I am able to discern. On that page he writes:

In the First Edition, the analysis of “object” is introduced within the context of a reflection on the subjective nature of appearances. Kant there suggests that since appearances are “nothing but sensible representations which, as such, and in themselves, must not be taken as objects capable of existing outside our power of representation, the question naturally arises: “What, then, is to be understood when we speak of an object [Gegenstand] corresponding to, and consequently also distinct from, our knowledge?” (A104). The concern therefore is with the condition of the representation of an object in the “weighty” sense, which is schematically characterized as “something in general = x (A104) and later as the “transcendental object = x (A109). (i.a.)

This is perhaps, it is arguable, the most important passage in the Critique of Pure Reason since depending on how one interprets it one identifies oneself and one’s interpretation as “critical-idealist” or as “dogmatic-realist.” It is apparent that Allison does not take Kant at his word—which he ought to have done—when Kant says “appearances are nothing but sensible representations,” and which for this reason “must not be taken as objects capable of existing outside our power of representations.” It is this failure to take Kant literally, I feel, which is the cause of all of Allison’s difficulties and misunderstandings.

The key sentence of Allison’s which reveals all is, “The concern, therefore, is with the conditions of the representation of an object in the ‘weighty’ sense . . .” The point I wish to make is, in a nutshell, that since appearances or objects are nothing but sensible representations there can be no “representation of an object in the “weighty” sense. And this precisely because there is no “object in the weighty sense!” That is, there is no “representation of” precisely because the representation is the appearance or is the object itself. There is no “further” object in addition to the sensible representation. This exactly is Allison’s dogmatic mistake: to assume that there is one.

His position is clear now and can be corrected easily. In a word, Allison illicitly, and perhaps subconsciously,imports into the Critique the classical representational theory of perception and knowledge. That is to say, Allison makes a “radical distinction” between the object (the object represented) on the one hand, and the power of representation or the representation on the other—whereas Kant does not. The two lie completely outside each other. “That which represents” (and the representation) lies on one side—in inner sense. “That which is represented” (the “weighty” object or appearance) lies on the other side—in outer sense. This forces Allison to take “appearance” in a double sense as well. “Appearance” in the “weak” or “subjective” sense, is the same as “sensible representation” (as above) or “perception,” occurs in inner sense, and is what is alone perceived; while “appearance” in the “weighty” or “objective” sense is equated with the actual object itself (the object which the sensible representation in inner sense is alleged to represent or “stand for” such as a “house” (spatial, physical, material) which occupies “outer sense,” however on this view, there is

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no direct experience or contact with it. This is the precise problem with which Allison saddles Kant, viz. How does Kant know that the categories, which certainly apply to perception (or sensible representation) apply as well to experiential objects or objects in the “weighty” sense, distinct from perception and inhabiting “outer sense”?

As we now see, this is a pseudo-problem—or Allison’s problem not Kant’s. As I said from the start, once one posits a “distinction” between the object (appearance) and its representation it thus becomes impossible to prove a “connection” to exist between it and the categories and thus to have a priori knowledge of it. But the truth is, as the Aesthetic has shown, there is in fact no distinction between the objects of knowledge (which are only appearances or sensible representations) and their representations (or the power of representation or cognitive faculty).

Allison completely misunderstands therefore Kant’s “Copernican” revolution. All theories of knowledge previous to Kant were theories of “re-presentation.” Kant’s, in contradistinction to them, is a theory of “presentation” (cf. Fichte and Schelling on this key point). If one does not take the results of the Aesthetic seriously one is bound to enter the Analytic saddled with a theory of re-presentation rather than one of presentation, and (mis) interpret it accordingly.

Space, time, extension, etc., do not belong to the things of experience themselves (or “in themselves”) but to our sensibility which now reaches to and encompasses infinity, an inescapable conclusion of Kant’s principles and very vital to master. For if one fails to do so one rivets oneself to a pre-critical standpoint. The key point again, expressed in its purest simplicity, is that “appearances are not mind-independent but mind-dependent” (and none the less “objective” for all that, indeed what yields the only and true objectivity possible). Recall that “space” is an “infinite given a priori magnitude,” all of whose parts “coexist ad infinitum” - there are not “two” spaces, a “finite” a priori space in us, and an “infinite” a posteriori space over against this and outside or independently of us (cf. Fichte’s “infinitely outreaching activity,” and his remarks: “any given I is itself the one [infinite] substance [of Spinoza],” and “the I posits the not-I [viz. infinite space and time, the universe] inside itself,” etc.).

This means above all, as noted, that the things with which we have to do are not self-subsistent things “in themselves” but rather nonself-subsistent appearances, having no existence whatever apart from our sensibility—the reverse of what was previously believed (e.g. for Newton, the universe was, in Kant’s words, an “infinite self-subsistent ‘Undinge’ or non-entity”). Kant hammers home this point numerous times in the Aesthetic and elsewhere, for example at A42,

[If] the subject, or even only the subjective constitution be removed, the whole constitution [physical properties, natures] and all the relations nay space and time themselves, would vanish. [And why is this, one might ask? Because . . .] Appearances [ e.g. planets, stars, black holes] are nothing in themselves and apart from us.

And from the Prolegomena,

Long before Locke’s time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things that many of their predicates may be said to belong, not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go further and, for weighty reasons, rank as mere appearances also the remaining qualities of bodies which are called primary—such as extension, place, and in general, [infinite] space, with all that which belongs to it

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(impenetrability or materiality, shape, etc)-no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. (i.a.) (Ellington, p. 33, Carus 289)

So long as things in experience were taken as having a being “in themselves” and “apart” from the cognitive subject and its power of representation (Vorstellungskraft), the only theory of knowledge of these things possible is a re-presentational one, according to which my perceptions, ideas, cognitions could only “re-present,” “copy,” or “stand-for” such independently existing things (in themselves)—e.g. Aristotle’s (and Descartes’) theory which holds that in knowing e.g. the stone, it is not the actual stone which is in the soul or knower but only its image or copy. But as soon as things come to be known as “appearances,” the situation alters drastically. Since they have no existence “in themselves” or apart from sensibility and thus apart from the cognitive faculty; this is the point most vital to comprehend, re-presentation becomes impossible since there is nothing, no independent being, to re-present. Thus, re-presentation (or Vorstellung) becomes (what it should have always been according to its etymology) “presentation,” the presentation and the appearance coincide, or are “one and the same.” —This, as we will see, was the point Beck, Fichte and others fastened on as the main “critical” insight and innovation, viz. that all previous and “dogmatic” theories were unintelligible because as re-presentational they had to assume a “bond” or connection between the (inaccessible) object and its re-presentation in the subject, a “bond” which, like the object, could neither be perceived nor intuited. Allison appears still to be stuck at this point, as are the vast majority of today’s philosophers, in our opinion and given our reasoning is sound. Kant does not have this problem as his Aesthetic makes it possible to regard object and representation, appearance and presentation as one and the same.

Moreover, as I have tried to argue, what I regard as reflecting the “spirit” of Kant, the manifold is to be viewed as entirely a product of our Force (“-kraft”) of representation, and is “krafted” solely by the latter and is not, as many believe, the result of an “interaction” between a “thing in itself” and our “force of representation,” of one “non-extended invisible thing (-in-itself)” on another such thing (the self or power itself) - the entire “content” of experience deriving exclusively from the mind’s awesome unconscious, “blind” power of Productive Imagination (“Productive Intuition” for Schelling, see below p. 270). In no way does it derive from the mind’s being “affected” by a non-extended, invisible “Thing-in-itself” having location neither in space nor time and absolutely external and independent of the mind, such an “interaction” being inconceivable (cf. Kant on the senseless notion of such an entity’s properties “migrating into the faculty of representation,” also cf. A390-393 and Fichte below p. 300). As noted at the outset, I submit that Kant purposely inserted some “clinkers” into the Critique in order to preserve a place for “dogmatism” and for a “thing in itself” to get past the censors and avoid the charge of “atheism” (indeed, Schelling calls Kant’s a philosophy of “accomodation”4). In fact Kant undercuts these statements by saying that a Thing-in-itself “may underlie appearances (B49)” and “it is still an open question … nothing may be there, etc. (A253).” Hence, in light of this he could not have positively asserted “a Thing-in-itself must underlie appearances as “cause” and as “affecting” us. An “object” then is no longer something which is utterly independent of representation or the knower, it is defined exclusively in terms of categorially linked representations or appearances (what alone exists, or is present to the mind).

Thus,—and here I would contend lies the secret of the Critique, fathomed only by Beck, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and perhaps a few others—appearances (tables, planets, stars) literally “must not be taken as objects [Gegenstande] capable of existing outside our power of

4.See Schelling’s remarks on Kant’s “system of accomodation” in Of the I, in Marti 105f and 119n.

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representation” (A104). Allison, because he assumes a re-presentational theory, interprets this non-critically as saying in effect, that appearances are indeed capable of existing outside our power of representation. That is, it is only (what he calls) “subjective” appearances or representations “of” appearances (“of” physical, extended things) and not appearances themselves which are contained within our power of (for Allison) re-presentation, but not appearances as such (or “objective” appearances). That this reflects his true viewpoint is seen, as I noted, from his statement on page 147 that the crucial A104 passage concerns “the conditions of the representation of an object in the ‘weighty’ sense.” Thus, he identifies the “object” Kant refers to as “corresponding to, and consequently also distinct from, our knowledge” (and thus as “existing outside our power of representation”) with the “weighty” object, i.e. with a “real object” or appearance as such, e.g. a house, tree, or star, occupying inner sense. He then strangely goes on to equate this “weighty” object or appearance with the “transcendental object = x.” And of course since Kant, in this particular text, speaks of the latter as unknown and un-intuitable the former must likewise be so regarded. Thus, we have before us a straightforward theory of the re-presentational kind, according to which all we have access to is what falls or occurs within our knowledge or power of representation. The representations (e.g. of the pen, book, moon) which occur in the latter are “understood” to be representations of what lie outside of and is “distinct” from our knowledge, viz. the “weighty” object, with which we have no direct or un-mediated acquaintance.

It is obvious this is a total misreading of Kant’s text which is simply concerned with explaining that in view of the results of the Aesthetic and the a demotion of things to appearances or objects having no existence outside our presentational faculty, we need to revise our old understanding of an object. As appearances, the objects of experience have no existence distinct from our knowledge, hence an “object of representations” must be conceived in a wholly new way. As Kant says: “It is easily seen that this object must be thought only as something in general = x, since outside our knowledge we have nothing which we could set over against this knowledge as corresponding to it.” The key phrase is “outside our knowledge we have nothing.” This means that we are constrained to define “object” not as what is “distinct” from our knowledge but rather in terms of a “unity” (or necessary connection) which “we” effect among our modes of knowledge or (re)presentations. And of course Kant links this unity, the basis of a new “immanent” conception of an object, with apperception and the categories, i.e. with the unity of consciousness:

—the unity which the object makes necessary can be nothing else that the formal unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of representations. It is only when we have thus produced synthetic unity in the manifold of intuition that we are in a position to say that we know the object. A105

Thus, since the unity of the object and the unity of apperception or the subject (“I”) are the same unity, and since this unity of representations (which is to constitute the new and only object) is now to take the place of the old object, conceived as distinct from representations or knowledge, the “transcendental object” (in the present text) must be identified with the latter immanent object—which is strictly a function of apperception, unity, and synthesis—and can in no way be equated with a “weighty” object or appearance located outside my knowledge, as Allison wishes to do. —This is also absurd since the “manifold of intuition” embraces outer as well as inner intuition, as the manifold is spatial and space is the ground of outer sense.

That Kant’s theory is presentational rather than re-presentational and that appearance and representation are co-extensive or co-incidental, is further supported in many places in the Critique,

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for instance in the famous Second Analogy. Kant observes: “Now immediately I unfold the transcendental meaning of concept of an object, I realize that the House [Allison’s “weighty” object] is not a thing in itself, but only an appearance, that is, a representation, the [Kantian heuristic] transcendental object of which is unknown. B236.” Then he continues:

What then am I to understand by the question: how the manifold may be connected in the appearance itself, which yet is nothing in itself. That which lies in the successive apprehension is here viewed as representation, while the appearance which is given to me, notwithstanding that it is nothing but the sum of these representations, is viewed as their object. . .

[Note well] We have representations in us, and can become conscious of them. But however far this consciousness [of what is in us] may extend, and however careful and accurate it may be, they still remain mere representations i.e. determinations of the mental state. B242

And most of all:

How then does it come about that we posit an object for these representations and so in addition to their subjective reality, as modifications, ascribe to them some mysterious kind of objective reality. Objective meaning cannot consist in the relation to another representation (of that which we desire to entitle object), for in that case the question then again arises, how this latter representation goes out beyond itself, acquiring objective meaning in addition to the subjective meaning which belongs to it as determination of the mental state. If we inquire what new character relation to an object confers upon our representations, what dignity they thereby acquire, we find that it results only in subjecting the representations to a rule, and so in necessitating us to connect them in some one specific manner; and conversely, that only insofar as our representations are necessitated in a certain order as regards their time-relations do they acquire objective meaning. B243 (i.a. in part)

The clincher is 1. Kant’s identification of an intuitable house, i.e. a “weighty” object, with appearance, 2. his assertion that an appearance is “nothing but the sum of [its] representations,”and 3. his statement that “the house is not a thing in itself but only an appearance, that is, a representation,” the appearance (or representation) being “nothing in itself”—and “nothing” surely means the same thing in German that it means in English, does it not? Kant also reiterates here the point that appearances/representations, as “modifications” or “determinations of the mental state,” have nothing but subjective reality (the conclusion of the Aesthetic). They come to have “objective” reality and meaning—while not forsaking their subjective reality—as a result only of their “re-ordering” in the (reproductive) imagination by means of a category in a judgement. This, as I noted, what Robert Paul Wolff has brought to light, is the key to the solution of the problem of distinguishing an “objective” order of representations “distinct” from the latter’s “subjective” order in the synthesis of apprehension of imagination. Thus, the objective order is not an order of “objects” viewed as literally distinct or independent of my “subjective” representations, as is widely held, rather it is the self-same subjective order and representations (recall Kant’s, ‘we have nothing but our representations, and cannot go beyond them’) however now “re”-ordered or given a new arrangement in imagination in accordance with the category of cause and effect. The “object” first comes to exist only upon completion of the category’s or the I’s “Act”—(hence the “I” is truly the

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sole ground of objectivity for Kant - as for Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel - after all)—of re-ordering the representations or appearances, and not before; such “category produced objects” then, are the only objects there are in experience and in the Critique.

Notice as well in the above texts, what is significant, that there is no mention at all of an “object” in the sense of what is independent of my perceptions or representations. Indeed, once one makes the transcendental realist move of separating the two or of positing a “weighty” object, one thereby exchanges empirical “reality” for empirical “ideality,” i.e. one ceases to be im-mediately in touch with the object itself but instead with its copy or effect. As Kant says at A369,

It is in fact this transcendental realist who afterwards plays the part of empirical idealist. After wrongly supposing that objects of the senses, if they are to be external, must have an existence by themselves, and independently of the senses, he finds that, judged from this point of view, all our sensuous representations are inadequate to establish their reality. [hence, our representations are different from their object, and as such are “ideal” and not real]

Also compare his text at A370:

External objects (bodies [= physical things]), however, are mere appearances, and are therefore nothing but a species of my representations, the objects [e.g. turnstyles, hydrants] of which are something only through these representations. Apart from them [the representations] they [the objects] are nothing.

Or in the language of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel’s version of transcendental idealism, things have only a “being for us” (fur uns) and not a “being in themselves” as well. And this, as Kant was the first to realize, is the way it should and must be in order to guarantee the experiential reality of nature and things of sense; for if nature is granted a being in itself or independent of the experiencer then one is no longer experiencing nature itself but a “re-presentation” of it - although, as I and others have said, it is impossible to make intelligible how something outside of us can subsequently come to be inside of us or be presented in us, not to mention how an inert, passive “thing” can “actively” produce a “representation” in us, the latter being wholly heterogeneous with a thing. As I said earlier, it is his re-presentational reading of the transcendental deduction which leads Allison to conclude that it is a failure in respect to its third task, that of linking the categories with a “real” or “weighty” object, i.e. with an appearance or object of possible experience.

“Perception” vs “Experience.” In the present section I will simply examine the two key sections of his analysis which point out his misconstrual of the difference between “perception” and “experience” - the basis for his negative verdict vis-a-vis the Deduction, and then go on to look at section 26 of the B-Deduction where Kant attempts to ground the crucial connection between categories and experience and try to show that and how it really succeeds. But first it is needful to draw attention to Allison’s grasp of the difference between “judgements of perception” and “judgements of experience.” On page 158 Allison writes:

Kant here [his text at B142] conflates the contrast between the objective unity of self-consciousness that occurs in judgment and the subjective unity of consciousness produced by association with the quite different contrast between judgments which refer to objects in

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the “weighty” sense (judgments of experience) and those which refer to the state of the subject (judgments of perception).

This clearly implies that Allison interprets “judgments of experience” as “judgments which refer to objects in the ‘weighty’ sense”; as opposed to “judgments of perception”, which “refer to the state of the subject”. Since, as we have seen, by a “weighty” object Allison understands a “transcendental object” or an appearance as such and located in outer sense and completely outside and distinct from knowledge, representation and perception, it is obvious that his grasp of a “judgment of experience” and of the latter’s relation to a “judgment of perception” is faulty. Because perception, as well as representation and intuition, is coextensive and one with appearance as embracing both outer and inner sense, as we have seen, “judgments of perception” themselves become or are converted into “judgments of experience (of objects)” merely and precisely by applying a category (of an “object”) to the former. This, as will be seen, is the key to a favorable outcome of the Deduction. That is, to have shown that the categories have a necesary application to the synthesis of apprehension, i.e. to perception, is ipso facto to have shown that they have a necessary application to experience and experiential objects as well.

Before examining the key section Allison entitles, “C. Perception and Experience,” (p.167), it will be helpful to have before us his general assessment of the transcendental deduction. With regard to the first part of the Deduction Allison remarks:

As we have seen, this portion of the Deduction establishes the necessity of the categories for representing an object in the judgmental or logical sense. Clearly, it does not follow from this alone that the categories have any application to the actual content of human experience. Still less does it follow that the categories somehow make experience possible, especially if by “experience” is meant empirical knowledge of objects in the “weighty” sense.

Since the first part of the Deduction did not connect the categories with experience, i.e. with a “weighty object,” the question becomes, can the second part be said to have established such a connection? Allison’s answer to this is:

The third [main section of Allison’s discussion] deals with the argument of the second half of the Deduction. I argue that this portion of the proof of the categories is at best only partially successful. The problem is that Kant’s endeavor to connect the categories with human experience seems to have been motivated by two distinct concerns. One is to show that they necessarily apply to the sensible data of human intuition, which is enough to establish their objective reality. The other is to show that they somehow make experience possible with experience understood as empirical knowledge of objects and an objective order distinct from perceptions [note] and their subjective order. I argue that even under the most charitable interpretation, the Transcendental Deduction cannot be taken to have accomplished the latter task.

As I noted, Allison contends that though the Deduction may be judged “partially successful” it has not succeeded in demonstrating a connection between categories and objects in the “weighty” sense, i.e. experience, hence in this regard it is a failure. However, as I suggested, it may only be a failure if one assumes a “weighty” object as operative in the Kantian text, - if there is no such object the outcome may be very promising.

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The B-Edition Deduction according to Allison can be divided into three sections. The first, spanning PP’s 15-19, establishes the “unity” of transcendental apperception (I am, I think) as the absolute ground of all combination, unity, and connection among our representations and aims at linking apperception and the categories (its modes) with the logical form of all judgments and thus with the object in judgmental or logical, as contrasted with the “real” or “weighty” sense. The second section, comprising PP’s 20, 21-25, is concerned with showing the necessary connection between the categories and the manifold of a given intuition “in general” (human and other). The third section of the argument, PP26 by itself, establishes the necessary linkage of the categories to the manifold of a given intuition “in particular,” i.e. to our special mode of empirical or sensible intuition and thus to all objects (“real” or “weighty”) which can be given to our senses. As Kant summarizes at B145: “In what follows (cf. PP26) it will be shown, from the mode in which the empirical intuition is given in sensibility, that its unity is no other than that which the category (according to PP20) prescribes to the manifold of a given intuition in general.”

Thus, PP26 will seek to show that the “unity” of empirical intuition is the “same unity” which the categories prescribe to intuition in general, and will do this by attending to the “mode” in which the former is given to the latter. The mode in which a manifold of empirical intuition is given to us is through a “synthesis of apprehension” which results in perception and which is effected by transcendental imagination. What has to be shown is that the categories govern not only the intellectual synthesis and imaginative (figurative) synthesis but the apprehensive synthesis as well. That the categories govern the intellectual synthesis has been established in the first section of the argument. That they govern the imaginative synthesis is shown in the second section in PP24 at B152. There it is shown that the manifold of a priori sensible intuition (in general) or the pure manifold of space and time is necessarily subject (qua mere receptivity) to synthesis by transcendental imagination, a synthesis which is grounded in the “unity” of the categories.

This establishes that the “unity” of space and time is the “same unity” as that of the categories. Let us now look at the crucial and climactic PP26 where all this gets puts together and where it is shown that the categories rule as well over the third synthesis, that of apprehension.

Kant, in analyzing the “mode” in question, begins with a definition of a “synthesis of apprehension” as the “combination of the manifold in an empirical intuition, whereby perception … is possible” (B160); this one sentence replaces Section 2, the “subjective deduction,” of the A-Edition Deduction. Kant goes on to say that this “synthesis of apprehension” must of necessity conform to space and time (the “a priori forms of outer and inner intuition”), for otherwise this synthesis cannot take place. Space and time, however, as being not merely forms but “intuitions” and thus having a manifold which as such must be unified, must therefore be represented as a “unity.” Thus, the synthesis of apprehension in being subject to a priori space ant time is also subject to the self-same “unity” of space and time. As Kant says, in his inimitable style,

Thus unity of the synthesis of the manifold, without or within us, and consequently also a combination to which everything that is to be represented as determined in space or in time must conform, is given a priori as the condition of the synthesis of all apprehension—not indeed in, but with these intuitions. B161

Thus, since the synthesis of apprehension, i.e. perception (and thereby everything presented in space and time), is subject to the “unity” of the a priori manifold of space and time (i.e. of a given intuition in general), and this “unity” is subject to or rather identical with the “unity” of the

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categories, it can be concluded that the synthesis of apprehension is necessarily subject to the categories.

Up until this point of the argument, Allison has no real difficulties. It is Kant’s final statement, in which perception (the synthesis of apprehension) is linked to experience, that he contests and which leads him to pronounce negatively on the Deduction. Kant says:

All synthesis, therefore, even that which renders perception possible, is subject to the categories; and since experience is knowledge by means of connected perceptions, the categories are conditions of the possibility of experience, and are therefore valid a priori for all objects of experience.

Allison will allow that Kant has shown that the categories have necessary application to perception or empirical intuition but not that they apply to “experience” in the sense of making experience possible. By “making experience possible” Allison means—and this is the crucial point, the source of his error—to show that “the categories make possible the knowledge of an objective order of things and events [“objective experience”] distinct from the subjective order of perceptions” (p. 168). This is the same as to say that they make possible the experience of objects in the “weighty” sense, i.e. objects which are conceived as distinct and independent of our perceptions or representations occurring (according to Allison) in inner sense. It is important to grasp that this and no other sense is what the word “distinct” in this context signifies for Allison. This is borne out by his remark on p. 169, (5] above), which is decisive even though it refers primarily to the Analogies. Kant writes that, “This principle applies to all objects, but it does so as a condition of their apprehension in empirical consciousness, not as a condition of the actual experience of such objects as distinct from our representation of them. (i.a.).” —And especially on p.167 where his “double” appearance hypothesis is clearly evident.

Appearances in the sense presently under consideration are modifications of inner sense; they are “in us” in the empirical sense, and this holds true even though the actual content of the appearance (the sensible data) derives from outer sense. We can, therefore, say that perception is a mode of consciousness that has as its objects modifications of inner sense.

Thus, if Allison’s hypothesis is right then obviously the categories in applying to perceptions or empirical intuitions and only to “subjective” appearances, which are confined to inner sense, do not apply to “weighty” objects or “objective” appearances in outer sense. However, Allison’s hypothesis is clearly wrong.

In the first place, it is absurd to say that perception or empirical intuition, for Kant, does not extend to or involve outer sense. This is because empirical intuition qua intuition is grounded in pure “transcendental” intuition which has both spatial and temporal components, hence empirical intuition (Anschauung) obviously has a spatial component and space is the form of outer sense. Moreover, as we have seen from my analysis of the Aesthetic, all the spatiality and extension known to pertain to extended material objects in outer sense (to refrigerators, galaxies, etc.), i.e. all a posteriori extension, has its source in (indeed is the same as) a priori extension or space, and further, since space is intuition, in a priori intuition. It is absurd to say that empirical intuition or perception does not embrace outer sense or that outer sense contains spatial determinations which are foreign to and lie outside empirical intuition. For as we know, for Kant there is only “one space,” and “one spatial intuition.” “A priori” space and “a posteriori” space—the space involved in outer sense—are

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one and the same space; the a priori spatial manifold is the manifold qua determinable, whereas the a posteriori or empirical manifold is the “same” manifold—not a different one, as Allison seems to hold—qua determined or under determination. This is clear from Kant’s remarks at A27/B43 where he writes: “The constant form of this receptivity, which we term sensibility, is a necessary condition of all the relations in which objects can be intuited as outside us; and if we abstract from these objects, it is a pure intuition, and bears the name of space. (i.a.).”

Thus, there is only one manifold of space (intuition), thus if I take away all the physical, material, sensible objects in the empirical intuitional manifold before me, - my desk, the walls of the room, the earth, the planets and all the galaxies, what remains is the pure intuitional manifold. To go with Allison, and to say that perception (sensible intuition and thus pure intuition) does not reach to outer sense (and space), one is forced to hold that there are not one but “two” spaces, or that a priori and a posteriori space are “different” spaces, or that the space of physical, material objects (in outer sense) is “different” from pure space. In point of fact, Allison’s theory has now devolved into that of Descartes; for empirical intuition, our only access to the world, does not extend beyond inner sense, thus we have no experience of real space at all, just a copy, “idea” or re-presentation of it. Further, Kant himself refers in the proof, which apparently Allison has overlooked, to “everything that is to be represented as determined in space and time” (B161), which surely indicates that his proof is meant to include appearances in outer sense and also gives confirmation to my interpretation.

Secondly, there is absolutely no textual support for Allison’s “double” appearance theory. Kant himself defines perception at B160 as “empirical consciousness of the intuition (as appearance).” There is no evidence that “appearance” here is to be taken in a sense different from that in which it is usually and consistently taken; for Allison holds that “Appearances in the sense presently under consideration are modifications of inner sense” (P. 167). The fact that the argument is meant to be valid for “everything in space and time” leaves little doubt that “appearance” here is meant to be a “real” object, i.e. an object in “outer sense.” Part of Allison’s confusion, I feel, may be due to his failure to realize that for Kant the “object” and the “intuition” are not two separate or distinct things. That is, as the text suggests, intuition and appearance are the same thing or are coterminous.

It is true that in the Critique Kant never clearly or satisfactorily expresses this important point which if not understood leads the reader naturally and inevitably into a dogmatic and re-presentational interpretation of the text. However, in his letters it can be seen that this is undoubtedly his view. For example, consider his letter to J.S. Beck of January 20, 1792 in which he says: “You put the matter quite precisely when you say, ‘The content of a representation (intuition) is itself the object (Gegenstand)’.” This clearly indicates that the “object” of a representation or intuition cannot be thought of as something “in addition to” or “behind” the intuition itself.

Thus, since for Kant the representation or perception is literally “one” and coterminous with the object or the appearance (which is single not double) Allison is wrong in reading into the text a “weighty” object construed as something “distinct from our representation of it.” Consequently, Allison errs when he writes:

The most that follows from this role [of the categories in the synthesis of apprehension] is that the categories are necessary for the connection of perceptions in “empirical consciousness”; it does not follow from it that they also function to relate these perceptions to an objective order and thus produce experience. Indeed, it does not follow from the argument of the Transcendental Deduction alone that experience in the Kantian sense is even possible. (p. 168) (i.a.)

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On the contrary, to categorially connect perceptions in “empirical consciousness” is the same as to relate perceptions to an objective order and, thus, to make experience possible. This is because the “objective order” which the connected perceptions make possible is not an order “distinct” from, as transcendent to, perceptions or representations, but rather “immanent” to them.

Allison’s erroneous assumption also causes him to misinterpret the two examples Kant gives after the deduction, viz., of the “house” and “freezing water” perceptions. Allison’s mistake of course is to separate what cannot be separated, i.e. to separate the perception of the house (“weighty” object) from the “actual experience of the object [house].” Since perception or empirical intuition is the only cognitive access to the house we have, it is impossible to see what is to be understood by the “actual experience of the [house]” which he obviously wants to oppose to the perception of it; recall, for Allison, the house is a “transcendental object.” Clearly, since the house is not a “thing in itself” but an appearance, and the latter is coterminous with perception, the actual house is to be found nowhere but “in the perception itself.” The point of the house-example is to illustrate the link between categories and synthesis of apprehension (perception) in regard to “space.” Simply, my perception (synthesis) of a house is made possible through the “unity” pertaining to the manifold in space. If I abstract or separate this unity from space, I am left with the “unity” involved in the category of “quantity” (i.e. of the synthesis of the homogeneous in an intuition in general). It is easy to see that since space underlies my perception of the house and space is the form of outer sense, my perception is of the actual, spatially embedded house in outer sense-intuition.

The point of the “freezing water” example is to illustrate the link between the categories and perception in regard to “time.” In essence, my perception of the succession of two states (fluidity and solidity) in the freezing of water - hence, experience - is made possible through the synthetic “unity” of the manifold in time. By separating this unity from time (the schema) I arrive at the category of “cause,” which allows me to relate the two perceptions as cause and effect. Kant then concludes that, “Thus my apprehension of such an event, and therefore the event itself, considered as a possible perception, is subject to the concept of the relation of effects and causes, and so in all other cases. (B163) (i.a. partly).”

Allison finds this conclusion rather puzzling, as of course it does not square with his re-presentational interpretation of the Analytic. He fails to see how Kant can identify the “apprehension of an event” with the “event itself,” i.e. the perception with the appearance, the representation with its object - even though Kant does this all through the Critique. For example, at B236: “appearance … is nothing but the sum of [its] representations.” [And] “appearances … are not in any way distinct from their apprehension (B235).” 5 Allison’s error can clearly be perceived in his following remarks:

If this argument establishes anything at all, it is only that the category of causality is necessary for the apprehension of a sequence of perceptions in inner sense. Thus, rather than the expected contrast of experience with perception, what we actually find in the second example is a parallel account of the role of a category in connection with the synthesis of

5 Also cp., “appearances … exist only in our representations.” (A506/B534); “By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all [from pins to quasars], representations only, not things in themselves, etc.” (A369); “Neither bodies nor motion are anything outside us; both alike are mere representations in us.” (A387); and “objects are nothing but representations.” (A371)

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apprehension or perception. They differ only in that the first example is concerned with the connection between apprehension, the category, and the synthesis of the manifold of outer sense, while the second is concerned with the connection between apprehension, the category, and the synthesis of the manifold of inner sense. In the second example Kant does, of course, refer to the perception of an event, and therefore to an instance of objective succession (a change of state of an enduring physical object).

Allison concludes, quite perplexed:

The problem is that not only does Kant fail to distinguish between the subjective order of apprehension and the objective order of the event, but he actually identifies them. 170 (i.a.)

Allison expects a “contrast of experience with perception” and is irritated because he does not find one. The point is, as we have stated: categorially connected perceptions or perceptions linked through concepts of an object—is experience, i.e., is experience of objects. Experience is not experience of a “weighty” object, of an object or objective order of events and things “distinct from our representations of them.” Allison faults Kant for “identifying” the subjective order of apprehension and the objective order of the event, i.e. the “apprehension of the event” and the “event itself.” He does not see that this is precisely the Copernican solution to the hitherto insoluble problem of the relation of the (re)presentation to its object, as well as to Hume’s problem. That is, the event is indistinguishable from its apprehension. The “objective order of the event” is not distinct and independent of the “subjective order” it is merely the “subjective order” itself but re-ordered. Briefly, the “subjective” order or juxtaposition of perceptions, as they occur in the synthesis of imagination “prior” to the categories’ operation, and constituting “subjective” time, itself becomes an objective order of “events” occurring in “objective” time when the imagination under the guidance of the categories re-arranges or re-orders the perceptions, giving them a necessary connection which they lacked as mere perception or as appearances of sensibility. As I noted, the contents of sensibility are utterly devoid of all unity and connection, for this they must look to understanding; indeed, Kant at the outset defines appearance as “the undetermined [i.e. uncategorized = without connection] object of an empirical intuition” B34/A20. This also means that since time is nothing in itself and since the original manifold is spatial only and not temporal as well (pertaining as it does only to “the relation of representations in our inner state” B50), it is imagination that creates objective time and thus objects, and this by re-arranging the order of perceptions given to it in accordance with the categories. The point is that only appearances or perceptions that have been subjected to categorial-imaginative re-ordering and –”placement” in objective time can be regarded as bone fide objects. Such “re-created” objects are the only ones that the Critique recognizes. Therefore, it is silly to think, as Allison wishes to do, of an “event” or an “object” outside of the subjective sphere of perceptions and representations —(remember infinite space is in us and it is only one; perhaps the stumbling-block of the majority of Kantians past and present)— and existing as such “prior” to the re-constructive work of the imagination and understanding.

Thus, it is not the “apprehension of the event” simpliciter that Kant equates with the “event,” i.e. “object” itself, but rather “the apprehension of the event as governed by the category of cause and effect” (i.e. by the concept of an “object” = a unified manifold, not an independently existing thing) that is so equated. It is this simple addition of the category to the perception that, as

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all the difference, turns the perception into an experience, i.e. into the experience of an object and thus makes experience possible.

Moreover, Kant’s position is that without a category it is impossible to recognize an event as an event, i.e. without a category there can be no “events.” This is because to recognize and assert something as “having happened,” which the concept of an “event” implies, one must in assuming a beginning of the happening suppose a preceding time in which it did not exist, and to do this one must “relate’ the event to the preceding time out of which it arose necessarily, i.e. one must employ the category of cause and effect. Thus, there are no “events,” “objects,” or “things” without categories and their operation in experience, indeed it is their operation that first makes experience possible.In the last paragraph of PP26, which Allison forgoes commenting upon, Kant seems to confirm the reading I have been arguing for based on the internal connection between the Aesthetic and Analytic and which recognizes nature’s absolute dependence, having been reduced to the status of appearance and representation, on the understanding and its categories for all unity, connection and, thus, lawfulness. In the context of answering the question as to why nature is bound to conduct itself in accordance with the categories and after remarking that this question is the same as that as to why appearances must conform to our a priori sensible intuition, Kant at B164 says the following:

For just as appearances [dogs, cats, kites] do not exist in themselves but only relatively to the subject in which, so far as it has senses, they inhere [note: appearances inhere in the subject], so the laws do not exist in the appearances but only relatively to this same being, so far as it has understanding. Things in themselves would necessarily, apart from any understanding that knows them, conform to laws of their own. But appearances are only representations … As mere representations, they are subject to no law of connection save that which the connecting faculty prescribes.

Note, it is because appearances are mere representations and not things in themselves, what the Aesthetic has established, that they have “in themselves” no law of connection and for this must look to understanding. Kant goes on:

… All possible perception is thus dependent upon synthesis of apprehension, and this empirical synthesis in turn upon transcendental synthesis, and therefore upon the categories. Consequently, all possible perceptions, and therefore everything that can come to empirical consciousness, that is, all appearances of nature, must, so far as their connection is concerned, be subject to the categories.

Kant also makes this point in the last paragraph of the A-Deduction which because of its importance and clarity I shall cite almost in full and with which I shall conclude my treatment of the first critic.

But if, on the other hand, we have to deal only with appearances, it is not merely possible, but necessary, that certain a priori concepts should precede empirical knowledge of objects. For since a mere modification of our sensibility can never be met with outside us, the objects, as appearances, constitute an object which is merely in us.

Since these “mere modifications of our sensibility [plants, houses, stars] can never be met with outside us,” then any unity, connection and “objectivity” they exhibit must have come from or been

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“put into them” (Bxviii, B241) by us alone (and by the mechanism of our mind), as they do not exist independently of our sensibility. Kant continues:

Now to assert in this manner, that all these appearances, and consequently all objects with which we can occupy ourselves, are one and all in me, that is, are determinations of my identical self, is only another way of saying that there must be a complete unity of them in one and the same apperception.

Notice he indicates that all my appearances or representations, i.e. from my childhood up to the present, are 1. all in me, 2. determinations of my identical self, i.e. of apperception (hence, all perception is apperception), and therefore 3. precisely at this moment—as at every moment—they are existing in a “single unity,” viz. in the unity of my apperception (or of my mind). As Kant also remarks, “All consciousness . . . belongs to [is in] an all-comprehensive pure apperception [i.e. self-consciousness]” A124; and Leibniz himself says that ‘my concept and Monad contains in itself, in its unity, all that will ever occur within it, i.e. all its presentations and states.’6 Kant then writes, “But this unity of possible consciousness also constitutes the form of all knowledge of objects; through it the [infinite] manifold is thought as belonging to a single object [note].” Observe it is the “unity” alone which gives the object. Kant goes on to say:

Thus the mode in which the manifold of sensible representation (intuition) belongs to one consciousness precedes all knowledge of the object as the intellectual form of such knowledge, and itself constitutes a formal a priori knowledge of all objects, so far as they are thought (categories). The synthesis of the manifold through pure imagination [hence imagination reaches to the stars, as Waxman and Wolff also hold to be Kant’s teaching], the unity of all representations in relation to original apperception, precede all empirical knowledge. Pure concepts of understanding are thus a priori possible, and, in relation to experience, are indeed necessary; and this for the reason that our knowledge has to deal solely with appearances, the possibility of which lies in ourselves, and the connection and unity of which (in the presentation of an object) are to be met with only in ourselves. Such connection and unity must therefore precede all experience, and are required for the very possibility of it in its formal aspect.

One should notice particularly that the reason the categories are not merely possible but necessary for experience is 1. that our knowledge has to do solely with appearances and not with things in themselves or with objects “distinct” from their representations, 2. that the possibility of appearances lies only in ourselves and thus 3. that the “connection” and “unity” of appearances are to be met with “only in ourselves,” i.e. since the appearances cannot exist outside us, the unity and objectivity (necessary connection) they exhibit, is to be explained from the mind’s (conscious and unconscious) Acts alone. Again, if our knowledge had to deal with, as is widely believed, things in themselves existing “distinct” from us then a priori concepts would not be necessary, for then their unity and connection (which we experience in them or assert them to have) would lie in themselves and could be explained without reference to ourselves. This moreover explains why Kant placed the Aesthetic before the Analytic.

6. See Leibniz, Monadology, Par. 61.Breazeale 385.

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P.F. Strawson

In a nutshell, Strawson is unhappy with the theory of transcendental idealism which he regards as incoherent, however he believes that it can be detached from the Critique without detriment to the work as a whole which can stand as an analytic account of the concept of experience. Thus according to Strawson there are two ways to read the Critique or “two faces” of it, a “transcendental idealist” and an “austere.” According to Part One of Strawson’s book, The Bounds of Sense, An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, what essentially distinguishes the two is that whereas the former regards all the necessary features which are part of a coherent conception of experience (of an objective world), roughly, space, time, and the categories, as belonging to our subjective constitution, the latter does not.

The austere view of, for example, space and time is that they are “a priori” in the sense of being “forms of particularity” or of particular instances (of general concepts). That is, a “minimal” conception of experience must include particular objects which require spatiotemporal location in order to be distinguished from one another—each has its “somewhere” and “somewhen.” Space and time on the transcendental idealist view, by contrast, are “a priori” in the sense that they inhere in us as forms of our sensibility and have no existence apart from ourselves. This would seem to imply that space and time, on the austere view, do have such independent (“transcendentally real”) existence, i.e. are “public,” in a certain sense of this word. Further, in that transcendental idealism assigns the entire spatiotemporal framework to the cognitive faculty, bodies in space and time are to be regarded as appearances or representations only, having no existence in themselves. Since supersensible things in themselves are regarded as Reality, it is only as a result of their “affecting” our cognitive faculty that we have states of consciousness which we are constrained to regard as perceptions of bodies in space. That is to say, “apart from [our] perceptions bodies are nothing at all” (57). For the austere view, bodies have independent existence and enjoy their own states and relations apart from our cognitive faculty and perceptions.

The main reason Strawson finds Kant’s doctrine unintelligible is that it perverts the normal “scientific” view of the distinction between the “mental” and the “physical,” the subjective and the objective, and the apparent and the real/or thing in itself, into one which lacks any sense. The normal view regards physical, spatial temporal things as the Real and our perceptions of them as resulting from our senses being “affected” by the same, it thus being possible, it is alleged, to distinguish between the real properties of the physical thing (qua primary) and its apparent properties (qua secondary) which can be regarded as merely subjective or mental. Here, appearances, reality and “affection” can be said to have clear referents and senses.

The transcendental idealist view, on the contrary, terms physical things appearances and their supersensible causes, Reality or “things in themselves,” and in further holding the former to arise only as a result of the latter “affecting” our faculty, it asserts that non-spatial-temporal entities give rise to spatiotemporal entities (i.e. appearances); as Schelling phrases it: “the visible is the product of one invisible (intelligible) acting on another invisible (intelligible),” (from the 1827 Munich Lectures).

Strawson indicates his overall understanding of the Critique in the following list of theses found on page 24 of his book, which he attributes to Kant and himself accepts as true:

1. that experience essentially exhibits temporal succession (the temporality thesis);

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2. that there must be such unity among the members of some temporally extended series of experiences as is required for the possibility of self-consciousness, or self-ascription of experiences, on the part of a subject of such experiences (the thesis of the necessary unity of consciousness);

3. that experience must include awareness of objects which are distinguishable from experiences of them in the sense that judgments about these objects are judgments about what is the case irrespective of the actual occurrence of particular subjective experiences of them (the thesis of objectivity);

4. that the objects referred to in (3) are essentially spatial (the spatiality thesis);

5. that there must be one unified (spatio-temporal) framework of empirical reality embracing all experience and its objects (the thesis of spatio-temporal unity);

6. that certain principles of permanence and causality must be satisfied in the physical or objective world of things in space (thesis of the Analogies).

CriticismMy general critique of Strawson will consist in the following. First, I will examine only 2 of his theses and try to show that Kant did not in fact hold them, given a certain interpretation of them. Second, I will indicate that and how Strawson’s own austere or scientific view as “weighty,” itself is beset with problems only transcendental idealism can resolve, hence that as Strawson fails to really comprehend the force of this superb doctrine he also has not “overcome Berkeley.” Lastly, I will indicate how he has misconstrued the Refutation of Idealism—that Kant does not hold the inconsistent positions that bodies both do and do not exist independently of our perceptions, and what the solution to this “exegetical paradox” of the Critique really is.

First. I will focus on theses 3. and 4. and ask , is this a valid statement of Kant’s thesis of objectivity? At first sight, it seems that Strawson’s proposition involves the correct premiss that since all we have to do with are our own perceptions (representations) and not with an object independent of them, objectivity must be constituted solely from within the context of our perceptions. If this is his position, then he is correct, as my preceding analysis has shown. Indeed, when he says “experience must include awareness of objects which are distinguishable from experiences of them,” he does not stop there but adds “in the sense that,” and goes on to explain this “sense.” If he would have stopped there, then the self-contradictory notion of an experience of an object regarded as absolutely independent of experience, i.e. the experience of a “thing in itself,” could be implied, which is unKantian.

Thus it is not in the latter sense in which the objects of experience are to be distinguishable from experience, but rather in the sense that “judgments about these objects are judgments about what is the case irrespective of the actual occurrence of particular subjective experiences of them.” Thus he is saying that objectivity consists not in there being “objects” actually existing apart from actual occurrences of particular subjective experiences of them, which I would argue is incorrect, but rather that it consists in the fact that “judgments” about objects hold of them regardless of whether or how anyone is experiencing them.

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This would be correct if the “objects” in question were constituted solely by means of application of categories to perceptions (which otherwise would be lacking in synthetic unity, i.e. objectivity), and were not a so-called “weighty object” which enjoyed a being of its own apart from our experiences of it.

However, if one looks at the other accounts of objectivity Strawson gives in the present chapter, it seems that the object in question in thesis 3. is construed by him in fact as a “weighty object.” On page 27, for example, he offers the following as reflecting Kant’s position in the Analogies:

… it must at least be possible to distinguish between the order and arrangement of our experiences on the one hand and the order and arrangement which objects of those experiences independently enjoy. For this, in turn, to be possible, objects of experience must be conceived of as existing within an abiding framework within which they can enjoy their own relations of co-existence and succession and within which we can encounter them at different times, etc.

And on page 256 he gives this characterization of Kant’s theory:

Kant’s analysis of experience drives steadily to the conclusion that the experience of a conceptualizing and a potentially self-conscious being must include awareness of objects conceived of as existing and enjoying their own states and relations independently of the occurrence of any particular states of awareness of them.

There is a certain ambiguity involved in interpreting Strawson’s meaning in these texts. It has to do with how the expression “must be conceived of” is to be construed. (A) If he means by this that objects of experience are merely to be “considered” as or “thought of” as having an existence, etc., of their own independently of any subject’s experience of them, without actually or in truth having any such independent existence, then this is correct. For Kant holds that objects “have no independent existence outside our thoughts” (A491/B519). And at A104 he tells us both that objects or appearances “are not capable of existing outside our power of representation” and that if, however, we wish to speak of an appearance as an object of science we must consider or think of it, i.e. our representation, as “referring to” a (transcendental) object (= x) distinct from it; i.e. we “think” an object for our intuition, even though no such “distinct” object exists (excepting the “thing in itself”). (B) But if by this he means these objects, as perceived, actually and in truth have an independent existence apart from their perception or representation in our sensibility (which includes space and time) then he is incorrect, this is not Kant’s position.

Concerning thesis 4., the question is, what does Strawson mean by saying the objects are “essentially” spatial? If by “essentially” he means in their essence or in themselves apart from relation to our cognitive faculty, then he is wrong. If however he means to say the objects are spatial only owing to their relation to our pure forms of intuition and for no other reason, then he is correct. Nevertheless, the fact that on the next page (25) he says the space Kant speaks about in the Aesthetic is “the space of objects conceived of as existing independently of our experiences of awareness of them” leads me to believe that the former is his meaning. However, my remarks about the sense of “conceived of” as Strawson employs this, apply as well in this case.

Second. The main criticism I have of Strawson is that he fails to see the true force of Kant’s transcendental idealism and as a consequence is unaware that his austere version of the Critique and

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his “normal scientifically minded philosopher’s” view of things is itself what is untenable, in that it involves the error and “illusion” of transcendental realism and empirical idealism.

For Strawson believes his “scientific-austere” viewpoint is able to distinguish between the “mental” and the “physical” which, since he rejects a “thing in itself”—what is of cardinal significance, must be regarded as absolute reality. Thus it seems he has not understood the force of Kant’s remarks at A369 where he shows the origin of empirical idealism from transcendental realism. Kant writes—perhaps the most important text in the Critique:

It is, in fact, this transcendental realist who afterwards plays the part of empirical idealist. After wrongly supposing that objects of the senses, if they are to be external [the “key”], must have an existence by themselves, and independently of the senses, he finds that, judged from this point of view, all our sensuous representations are inadequate to establish their reality.

I interpret this as saying that if the spatial, physical objects of outer experience are endowed with absolute reality or a being in themselves which they enjoy independently of relation to the cognitive subject, then we have no means of knowing them other than by “inference” from our sensible representations or perceptions, an inference of doubtful status (if for no other reason than that we ourselves may be the author-source of our outer representations).

Thus Strawson, since he, as far as I can tell, does hold this position, must be led to conclude, as a transcendental realist who is forced (this is crucial) to become an empirical idealist, that all he can know are his own representations or subjective mental states and not a physical thing, i.e. an object existing ontologically “distinct” from his representations. Furthermore, even if he believed there were an actual physical thing existing beyond his representations, i.e. the mental, how could he determine (as he seems to claim he can, cf. p. 42) whether and to what extent the physical corresponded with the mental?

Recall, what has absolute reality or exists in itself cannot be perceived or experienced. It seems clear that Strawson regards the physical object, i.e. the “Real,” as so existing. As far as I can see there is no way for him to avoid what Kant calls “empirical idealism.” The consequence of this, is that all science of nature, i.e. of the spatiotemporal physical, is thereby made impossible—which is against his position. Rather only with transcendental idealism is knowledge, and “a priori” knowledge, of nature possible, for with it the physical and representations coincide; to know and be in contact with representation is to know and be in contact with “the physical.” There is no divorce of representation and object, and this because space and time are “a priori” in us, are our pure intuitions, matter being a species of our representations, viz. of the kind termed “outer.” That is, spatiotemporal material properties have no proper existence apart from and can exist thus only within our sensibility or mode of representation. As Kant puts it so well in the Prolegomena (quoted also above):

Long before Locke’s time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things that many of their predicates may be said to belong, not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go further and, for weighty reasons, rank as mere appearances also the remaining qualities of bodies which are called primary—such as extension, place, and in general, [infinite] space, with all that which belongs to it

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(impenetrability or materiality, shape, etc)-no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. (Ellington, p. 33, Carus 289)

Further, since according to Strawson’s austere view space is not “a priori” qua existing only in our subjective constitution, he must conceive it as “a posteriori” or transcendently, i.e. as existing in and by itself apart from any possible pervceiver. This view, however, presupposes that it is possible to ignore the I or subject and in effect experience space (or spatial objects) as such or as it is in itself as though there were no perceiver or representor present. This is not possible. The only space, the only world there can be, and ever was, is the world qua perceived or represented, by and in a consciousness (as Fichte says, echoing the critical standpoint, “It is impossible to abstract from the I”—and get at the object as it is apart from the I, SW I,501).

It is only late in life that, after taking up philosophy, that we realize that this is so, thus we have been so thoroughly conditioned prior to this study to believe and comport ourselves in the world “un-critically,” so to speak, as though the latter only and always existed as un-represented. This is the basis of the “illusion” or deception (Plato was the first to notice) which I hold is behind Kant’s teaching, and that of his successors.7 It is very difficult to overcome—the belief that “appearances are things in themselves” (a.k.a. “dogmatism”)—and takes a lot of hard work to do so. Apparently Strawson (and Allison, et al) have not yet overcome it.8

That he at times seems not even to be aware of the illusion and problem it involves is clearly evidenced in passages of his such as the following on page 63:

Further, it makes no sense to inquire about the spatial relations between elements in my visual image and parts of my body or objects in my room. The space which includes the ink-bottle on my table does not include the ink-bottle in my mind’s eye. The ink-bottle in my mind’s eye does not take up or occupy any part of the space to which my physical ink-bottle belongs.

7. As Fichte says, the deception is deep-rooted and very hard to dispel. That is, “For we are all born into it, and it takes time to overcome it” (SWI,511, Heath 79). And as Kant himself tells us: “Now I maintain that all the difficulties . . . rest on a mere delusion by which [we] hypostatize what exists merely in thought, and take it as a real object existing, in the same character, outside the thinking subject (A384)” and: “In the case of judgements in which a misapprehension has taken deep root through long custom . . .” (A387) [what “custom”? - The “dogmatic” custom, namely, of] “looking upon [the things outside us] as real objects existing independently of us etc. (A389, i.a.).”Breazeale 398.8. Robert B. Pippin in his Kant’s Theory of Form, An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) also does not appear to be aware of the “illusion” at issue and of the key point that transcendental idealism alone guarantees empirical realism in view of his comment that Kant’s restriction of our knowledge to appearances, i.e. to objects as experienced or represented, makes it difficult not to regard his position as empirically idealistic. Pippin says on page 192 of his book:

What precisely is it to interpret claims about objects as claims about our experience or possible experience of objects if not to reduce them logically to claims about our (outer) sense experience?

Jonathan Bennett is clearly aware that for Kant objectivity is strictly a function of subjectivity but does not seem to be in touch with the problem Kant’s transcendental idealism was designed to solve. Thus he dismisses him as just another type of “phenomenalist.” See his Kant’s Analytic (London: Cambridge University Press, 1966), especially pages 126ff.

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(Kant’s answer of course, is that it does). Strawson doed not seem to realize that there is a real problem in distinguishing my visual image (i.e. perception) of the ink-bottle in space and the ink-bottle itself in space, i.e. he thinks it is an easy matter to distinguish the physical from the mental. He never explains in his book how it is possible to do this. Moreover, on page 42 he naively asserts although we cannot claim to know “every” aspect of Reality (i.e. the physical world, as the only world), we do know “some” aspects of it (we do possess some “facts”), i.e. we cannot say “our conceptual scheme corresponds at no point with Reality”—not realizing that his tacit commitment to transcendental realism/empirical idealism makes it impossible to know even a portion of the physical Reality which he must posit as existing beyond his representations (as endowing it with absolute reality or as existing in itself, i.e. as a “thing in itself”). The irony is that he condemns Kant for positing a “thing in itself” while he ends up himself positing a “thing in itself”!

Strawson and The Refutation of Idealism. Lastly: This criticism will be in two parts. In the first part, I will try to show that Kant in the Refutation of Idealism cannot be interpreted as saying that bodies in space are absolutely distinct from our perceptions of them and can thus be construed as “weighty objects.” In the second part, I will try to indicate the proper or “critical” manner in which to view the apparent “inconsistency” Strawson charges Kant with of saying objects are and are not to be regarded as independent of us. First Part: It is Strawson’s claim that Kant is inconsistent in that he holds the following two contradictory positions (cf. p. 259ff):

“Bodies exist independently of our perceptions” (austere).“Bodies do not exist independently of our perceptions” (transcendental idealist).

If Strawson’s interpretation is correct, the Refutation must assert that objects in space, outer objects, matter, material things or bodies—indeed, appearances—are “distinct” from our perceptions of them. However as a careful reading shows Kant’s text nowhere says that “we are immediately aware of bodies in space distinct from our perceptions of them.” —Indeed this would be a contradiction in terms, for if bodies were actually distinct from our perceptions, an immediate awareness of them would be impossible, as Kant well knows; also if so there would be “two” spaces. Kant in fact says the very opposite.

He says that I know of the existence of objects in space not on the basis of an inference from ideas within my cogito—which is the ground of Descartes’ “problematic idealism”—but rather through immediate experience of them. The statement of the Thesis by itself proves this since it claims to prove not “the existence of objects in space distinct from our perception” but instead “the existence of objects in space outside me.” Wherever the text mentions the word “perception” it is never attended by an “object distinct from” locution. It always has the connotation of being in direct contact with its object. Consider the following six points:

1. Regarding the “permanent” required to determine my own existence in time and which, since it cannot be something in me, is the basis of the proof of outer things Kant says (sentence 2 of proof): “All determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception.” That is to say, I have perception of the permanent. Indeed, if the permanent (= matter, cf. B278) were distinct from from perception it could not be perceived period.

To this it cannot be objected that because the “permanent” (or the object which is permanent) exists in all time, i.e. in objective time, and not just in “my own time,” the permanent object must therefore be regarded as “distinct” from me in the sense that it is capable of existing completely out of relationship with my own sensibility and thus may be regarded as a “weighty” or

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self-subsistent object. This is because space is restricted solely to my (our) own sensibility and further because it would violate the principle that the same thing cannot be conditioned and unconditioned, i.e. in relation and not in relation to me, at the same time. Moreover, “objective time” does not exist apart from all subjects/perceivers as it must be constituted on an individual basis (cf. A363), i.e. by every subject’s categorially determining for herself her representations as in universal time, i.e. “as though” in relation to a permanent in space.

Indeed, most critics fail to realize that in the end Kant traces the permanent in outer intuition back to the “a priori” sphere. For he says at B278: “and even this permanence is not obtained from outer experience, but is presupposed a priori as a necessary condition of determination of time, etc.” Again, time and space (matter and permanence) are in Kant’s theory grounded ultimately in the subject and not in the object of experience.

2. This reading is confirmed by (sentence 4): “Thus perception of this permanent, etc.” This speaks for itself. It should be noted that the permanent as matter (B278) has no independent existence apart from perception, experience, and sensibility, being only a “species of our representations” (A370).

3. Further (same sentence) Kant writes: “and consequently the determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of actual things which I perceive outside me.” This can be expressed as, “I perceive things outside me.” It does not say and cannot be read as saying “I perceive things distinct from my perceptions of them.” In any case it clearly says “I perceive things,” implying immediate contact with the things perceived.

4. The last sentence of the proof clearly speaks of “an immediate consciousness [“awareness” - Strawson] of the existence of other things outside me.” Moreover since obviously the “things” outside me as objects in space cannot be things-in-themselves of which we have no experience, they can only be appearances - in space and time; and appearances as we know are nothing apart from my sensibility. Thus “outside me” cannot mean “independently of experience” in the “transcendent” sense but rather in space or “within” experience (cf. A373).

It is well to remind ourselves that the purpose of the refutation is not to show that objects of perception are “distinct” or independent of their perceptions. Rather it is to show in Kant’s words, “that we have experience and not merely imagination of outer things.” (See also footnotes at B277 and Note 3., on the imagination/experience contrast). —Also cf. B279, “All that we have to prove is inner experience is possible only through outer experience.” Here again note there is no mention of experience of objects as “distinct” from experience.

5. The lengthy note appended to the Preface of the B-Edition makes it clear that the connection between inner and outer experience as “seamless” leaves no place for an object “distinct” from experience-perception. For example, at Bxl, Kant writes: “It is identical with the empirical consciousness of my existence, which is determinable only through relation to something which, while bound up with my existence, is outside me” (i.a. partly). Note that the something outside me is “bound up with” my existence and not separable from it. Moreover, I am bound up with it “in the way of identity (identitat, verbinden)”; and note, he adds “it is therefore experience not invention, sense not imagination [the key target of the refutation is Descartes] which inseparably connects this outside something with my inner sense” (i.a.). Note the words “inseparably connects,” meaning there is no separation between inner and outer experience and thus between the objects of the latter. This idea, i.e. of inner and outer sense composing a “single experience,” and which contains the identity or fusion of matter (the permanent) and mind, of outer and inner sense, is, as we shall see, the central principle of the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (as well as,

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retrospectively, of the inner structure of the Leibnizian “Monad” or autonomous, self-contained faculty of representation. Also note well Kant’s words:

For outer sense is already in itself a relation of intuition to something actual outside me, and the reality of outer sense, in its distinction from imagination, rests simply on that which is here found to take place, namely, its being inseparably bound up with inner experience, etc.”

Notice here that the reality of outer sense rests simply on its being inseparably bound up with inner experience and not at all on the independent or self-subsistent existence of the objects of outer sense—how could it, in light of the fact that the objects are only “appearances”?!

Lastly at Bxli Kant remarks that the object of outer sense constitutes with my own existence “but a single experience,” “… such as would not take place even inwardly if it were not also at the same time, in part, outer.” The point I wish to make is simply that Kant is using the term “representation” in this passage in a restricted sense and not in its usual broad generic sense which is inclusive of all concepts, images, and intuitions. “Representation” in this restricted sense is meant to refer merely to concepts and images but not to “intuitions” as well.

6. Finally, concerning the crucial sentence 4 which says: “Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me.” By “thing outside me” Kant can only be referring to a “thing qua appearance” in space and not a “thing qua thing in itself.” And we know an appearance as “nothing in itself” is identical with “representation” (in the usual sense) and cannot constitute an object distinct and independent from representation. It is true that to deny a Newtonian or Cartesian “thing in itself” is not to deny the public space of our experiential world(s), however “public space” cannot be construed in a transcendentally realistic fashion which would lead us to view appearances as unconditioned, self-subsistent entia which would exist even in the absence of all possible subjects. Therefore, since “thing” must be construed as equal to a representation, viz. intuition, representation in the phrase “representation of a thing outside me” must signify representation in the restricted sense, as meaning the same as “the idea or image of a thing (appearance-intuition) outside me.” Remember Kant wishes to refute Descartes and hold that we have actual experience or intuition of spatial things not mere imagination of them.

Moreover if representation in this text really was to be construed in the usual broad sense we immediately would be thrust outside the Critique and occupying a pre-critical standpoint, i.e. if there were a literal “disjunction” between the representation and the object it 1. would be impossible to determine if the representation “corresponded” to the object or not (what is distinct is inaccessible) and 2. all immediate experience of the object would thereby be cut off and the Refutation would be a failure (also cf. Note 1. “[Descartes] Idealism assumed that etc”). The only way “thing” can here be construed as something which exists beyond representation or intuition is if we take it as referring to a “thing in itself” or to the “transcendental matter” Kant sometimes speaks of as noumenal substrate of phenomena and sensation (see e.g. B182/A143). However, it cannot be so taken since it is said to be “in space,” that is, to be empirically not transcendentally outside us.

The Transcendental and Empirical Standpoints. Second Part: The explanation of the apparent inconsistency of Kant saying objects or bodies both are and are not to be regarded as “distinct” from us and what I take to be the real key to understanding the Principles and Analogies lies in the all-crucial distinction between the Transcendental Standpoint and the Empirical (experience).

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Briefly: The Transcendental or “critical” standpoint must be considered as expressing the real truth about bodies, namely, that they are nothing but appearances and in fact unable to exist distinct from perceptions/intuitions/representations (i.e. outside the soul, cf. A385-386). However,—and this is the crux of the Critique’s explanation of how experience is possible, which few seem to have grasped, if I am right—in the event that we wish to now “descend” to The Empirical, the level of Experience, i.e. to have “experience of an objective world,” and to engage in science, i.e. give ourselves “objects” to investigate and make judgments about, —we can do this only via our mechanism of “a priori representation.”

This mechanism, the “Laws of Experience” (which make experience of an “object” possible, an object that otherwise would not exist—this is the key) allows us, by acts of synthesis which apply our concepts (and principles) of an “object” to our fundamentally subjective intuition or representations (“appearances”), to convert an intuition into (and thus consider it “as though” it were—this is the key) an intuition “of an object,” qua an independently existing object “distinct” from our intuition.9 This, in effect, “artificial” object (indeed objects at bottom can be said to be nothing but “arti-facts”), is that which the intuition can be said to “correspond to,” a la A104; —it is the transcendental object or object in general = x, and solely a function or product of the category (of our act of categorization), of our subsumption of an intuition under a category, —literally, the “birthing” of objectivity, of an “objective world” (which was not there before), i.e. of an objective intuition (or perception), that is to say, of Experience.

Thus, it is the mechanism of the categories which allows us to “think objects” (= “synthetic unities”) for what by nature are not objects, are absolutely non-objective, qua a mere “determination or modification of our mind or inner sense.” Strangely enough, Strawson in a few places does hit upon this truth, for instance on page 260 he writes:

As it is with the question “Do bodies exist independently of perceptions?”, so it must be with the question, “Do bodies cause our perceptions of them?” From the point of view of the scheme to which we are empirically committed, the answer again must be “Yes.” We investigate empirically the physical and physiological mechanisms of this causation. But from the point of view of the critical scheme, the answer must be that bodies are nothing

9 Richard E. Aquila is among the few Kant interpreters who grasp this “as though” character and approach to the problem of the “object” in that his “phenomenological” reading of Kant, as presented in his Matter in Mind: A Study of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), construes an object/appearance as the “intentional object” of a cognitive representative state. In so doing, he argues, there is no need for us to “assume an ontological commitment to the objects of these states.” That is, if I interpret him rightly, the object in fact is inseparable from the representation (intuition, as in Husserl’s theory), but we in some instances are permitted or constrained to regard it “as though” it had independent ontological status (see p. 13 and 25ff; also cf. his Representational Mind: A Study of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983) pages 22ff and 111ff).

Heidegger in my view is one of the few who realize the object cannot be separated from representation or exist prior to our cognitive constituting and this because our a priori Principles are what first make objectivity possible. As he comments in What is a Thing? (tr. Barton and Deutsch, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1967):

Principles which ground the essence of an object cannot be grounded upon the object. The principles cannot be extracted by experience from the object, since they themselves first make possible the objectivity of the object, etc. (p. 185; also cf. 193, 141, 137).

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apart from perceptions and that the real cause of the latter is the unknown transcendental object.

—but dismisses it as perhaps being cogent but having “no power to restore to the theory of transcendental idealism the coherence and intelligibility it has been shown to lack.” —By this he means the difficulty of conceiving how a non-spatial temporal object (thing in itself) can by “affecting us” be the cause of what is spatial and temporal, viz. a physical thing.

I would furthermore argue that the above explanation is also the key to how the Principles are to be properly construed. In a word, they function to show how categories make possible experience of an objective world, that is, in light of the “transcendental” fact that there is no objective world as such but only our intuitions or representations (in our soul or inner sense). Thus for example, what the Analogies’ Principles really allow us to do is simply to regard subjective appearances (inhabiting our sensibility) “as though” they were substances and permanent and existing beyond our representations and perceptions. They therefore are not to be interpreted on a re-presentational model, i.e. one which regards substances and the permanent as already existent, the Principles just explaining how the categories can be made to relate to “them.” No. The Principles are simply what licenses my referring to appearances as substances. They are not in themselves substances, i.e. self-subsisting entities (this would make the Aesthetic a colossal joke). Two examples from the Critique may suffice to support this. At B228/A185 Kant says: “We can therefore give an appearance the title “substance” just for the reason that we presuppose its existence throughout all time, etc.” And at B227/A183 he writes: “In all appearances the permanent is the object itself, that is, substance as phenomenon, etc.” Note in the latter text he does not refer to substance “per se” but rather to substance “as phenomenon,” i.e. substantia phaenomenon (cf. A146/B186), that is to say, to appearance regarded as or as though it were a substance, even though we know it not to be one in truth (as the Aesthetic has proven).

Strawson himself even touches upon this obliquely in his treatment of the Refutation (p. 125). He comments:

It is impossible to draw the necessary distinctions between (1) the time-relations of the members of a subjective series of perceptions and (2) the time-relations of at least some objects which the perceptions are perceptions of unless the objects in question are seen as belonging to an enduring framework of relations, etc. (i.a.)

[And on p. 126-7] [We] need, at least, the idea of a system of temporal relations . . . But there is, for the subject himself, no access to this wider system of temporal relations except through his own experiences. Those experiences, therefore, or some of them, must be taken by him to be experiences of things (other than the experiences themselves) which possess among themselves the temporal relations of this wider system. (i.a.)

Therefore, the categories and Principles simply allow us to assume or presuppose (in an “as if” mode) that there is a permanent in or behind our (spatiotemporalized) perceptions. They do not tell us that there literally is a permanent, this would be substance in a non-phenomenal sense. Indeed, all we have are our changing perceptions; we really never perceive a “permanent.” Thus in the end we are only able to “assume” there is one present, i.e. epistemically act “as though” a permanent (i.e.

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other than the “thing in itself”) stood “behind” our fleeting perceptions (as a quantity in nature which can neither be increased nor diminished).

Moreover, in the Refutation where Kant says “I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time,” what he is really saying is that “if I wish to regard” my existence, my series of perceptions or states, as determined in time (in a universal, objective time) I must “presuppose” a permanent outside me. As he says, the permanent “is presupposed a priori as a necessary condition of determination of time” (B278), i.e. of determination of my own existence or states as being part of the one objective time (which is constituted immanently not transcendently or empirically).

Conclusion. As I said at the outset, Strawson’s grasp of transcendental idealism is only partially adequate. Its deficiency is perceivable in the following texts:

For he is committed . . . to the overriding principle that no perceptions dependent, as ours are, on independently existing objects as their real causes can possibly yield knowledge of those objects as they really are. (261) (and cf. 264, “faculties being affected by etc.”)

We perceive the things which, by affecting us, cause our outer perceptions, not as they really are, but only as they appear. (250)

As containing the egregious thought of a double or parallel object situation—Thing in itself/Appearance, where the two are related as cause and effect, reality and semblance—these texts contradict the empirical realism feature of Kant’s doctrine. For it is only if we deny to objects of experience a being “in themselves” (in addition to their patent being for us) that we can be assured of their reality, avoid “empirical idealism” and “prevent everything from being turned into illusion and imagination.” The teaching of Kant’s idealism alone guarantees we are in touch with the real sensible, material, spatial, physical object itself, not with its mere copy, re-presentation or surrogate.As said before, Allison has it essentially right (i.e. before his dogmatism led him astray). The solution to the “appearance-reality” quandary (or “gap”) lies in realizing that the Thing as it appears and the Thing as it is in itself (“thing in itself”) are not two distinct things, rather two ways of speaking of (“considering”) “one and the same thing,” viz. the appearance or phainomenon (that which shows itself). Of course, what has to be borne in mind, what Allison doesn’t make perfectly clear, is that the “second” way of regarding the thing, viz. as it is in itself “apart” from our cognitive structure or “epistemic conditions,” is entirely empty—as Kant hints in the Phenomena-Noumena Chapter at A253. That is, once one has removed from the object the entire wealth of its experienceable properties—its sensible qualities, quantity of extension, material, physical, spatial, temporal determinations—nothing at all remains, just an empty object or mere “thought” of an object; literally a “noumenon,” which is the true meaning of this term. The proper way to deal with those passages in the Critique which speak of “transcendent entities” as “causes” and “grounds” of appearances, and of entities having an existence apart from experience, which are the source of innumerable insoluble vexing problems such as that “we know reality and also do not know it,” etc., is in the following manner.

The central critical principle must be adopted and held fast from the very beginning, viz. that “one cannot abstract from the subject, or bypass, or go beyond the subject or consciousness or the I. Thus one should not, as Fichte will say, enter the Critique with the “thing in itself” or with the thought of an “independently existing thing” (indeed one should “check it in the coatroom” upon entering). —The opening passage of the Aesthetic can be read without interpreting “object” as a

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transcendent “thing in itself; and “affection” similarly need not be construed in terms of cause and effect (one is affected “with” and not “by” the object).

All the above problems which strew the literature arise only if one starts one’s analysis or reading of Kant’s text with the thought of an “independently existing thing-in-itself” regarded as a “cause” of one’s perceptions:—which then become perceptions of only appearances/copy and not of reality/original.—However, if one does not start with that thought-idea—and this can be justified on the ground that such an idea is impossible and inconceivable, and this either on critical principles, e.g. “causality” and “ground” is meaningless outside of experience (“transcendently employed”) or simply because the idea is self-contradictory as involving the “thought of a thing independent of thought,”—then there is no problem!

Then one start simply with what is before oneself, namely, the perception, presentation, appearance, or “thing” as it appears or presents itself to oneself and in oneself (in one’s consciousness; cf. A109 “all consciousness is self-consciousness...”). This is all that is present, all one has access to, and all one is entitled to speak about. Thus, one starts with the “Thing as it appears,” and then apply to this Thing alone—i.e., without also thinking the “Thing in itself” as accompanying it—the principle of transcendental idealism, namely, that if it in fact had a being “in itself” or was a thing “in itself” either 1) one would forfeit reality and have only a copy of it or, 2) one would experience nothing!

Therefore: In order to experience reality, better in order to have experience at all, the experiential Thing must be nothing in itself—only Appearance. Better, one could not even think the thought “if it had a being “in itself”! Thus, in order to do full justice to Kant’s teaching, transcendental idealism, one is well advised to make every effort to literally

Block off every avenue of escape-egress out of the present perception,out of Being-for-us.

—And simply attend to the way imagination generates or synthesizes it. Hence, one must not take flight with, or think the thought of, a “Thing in itself” (and as having causality)—one must compel oneself to remain within experience.

Thus, my point is that a statement such as “our perception is dependent on independently existing objects as their real causes and as affecting our faculties,” is completely meaningless and inconceivable. For one cannot even conceive of an “independently existing object,” let alone of its affecting or exerting causality on us (See below, Fichte p. 190ff). All that exists and ever will exist is the I—the “theater of the mind”—and what occurs in it (appearances or presentations), i.e a Being-for-itself (one’s own I) coupled with a Being-for-another or a Being-for-me. That is, if and only if the former (Being-for-itself) chooses to egress from its “I am” sphere and enter a subject/object, I/not-I (theoretical or practical) sphere; which is not outside its own sphere, but results from the I “limiting” its own sphere and “making room” for a not-I within itself, e.g. through the act of recognizing someone and, perhaps, entering into a conversation with this subject (See below, Fichte).

Finally, a close consideration of Strawson’s texts have shown that not only has he erred in charging Kant with gross inconsistency—a charge from which Kant, I believe, has been vindicated—he has clearly failed to appreciate the full depth and truth of Kant’s vision which he himself wishes to be called “Transcendental Idealism” and to perceive that a true “realism” is obtainable only by means of a true, i.e. “transcendental,” idealism, that is, only if no “gap” is posited between

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the object and its representation and one refrains from giving the object a being “in itself” apart from the being it has in representation as Erscheinung. Strawson above all has failed to appreciate the very welcome and needed principle—especially in an age in which technology and popular science have alienated us from our true home the Cosmos—of unity and harmony that it requires of us vis-a-vis our timely reflections on the relationship between Man and Cosmos, mind and nature, outer sense and inner sense: a vision of unity and “holism” especially appealing as it receives sanction by Reason itself.

Walker, Findlay, Waxman, Bohme, Sherover, and Srzednicki

All the commentators in the present section hold to a “weighty object” reading of the Critique and in so doing reveal that they have not grasped the crucial Aesthetic-Analytic hook-up and the true nature of the Kantian standpoint thus betraying themselves to be transcendental realists.

R.C.S. Walker. Though professing to be sympathetic to transcendental idealism, in contrast to Strawson, Walker shows in those texts in his monograph Kant which reveal his understanding of the Kantian “object” that he in fact occupies a pre-critical or transcendental realist standpoint. On page 75ff of that work he states what he takes to be the two senses of “object” operative in the Critique, neither of which is correct:

Experience, [Kant] tells us often enough, is the self-conscious knowledge of the objects of the senses. Unfortunately, however, the word “object” is ambiguous in a way he seems never fully to have appreciated. In one sense, objects are entities in the external world - things like tables and tiepins, capable of existing independently of their perceivers. Understood in this way, the admission that we have experience builds in more than we might have expected or wished, for it builds in a commitment to a world of independent entities which we perceive. In a second sense, “the objects of the senses” can be taken rather to mean the intentional objects of our sensory awareness, including our own inner feelings and whatever we seem to perceive, veridically or not. . . . But he never clearly distinguishes the two senses, and this is one of the things that makes his argument difficult to follow. Sometimes he intends the latter sense, but at other times the former, as when he distinguishes between judgements of perception and judgements of experience in the Prolegomena - judgements of experience being those which purport to “agree with” some independent object.

There are four points to make. 1) The first sense of object is clearly that of a “weighty object,” as a thing which is “capable of existing independently of [its] perceiver,” and is thus not the Kantian object reflective of the position of transcendental realism. That is, if the object really had an existence independent or distinct from perception—i.e. spatial intuition, it could never be or become an object of perception, or enter into my faculty of representation. 2) The second sense is closer to that of the true “critical” object but falls short of it as well in that it fails to mention the connection

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between “object” and “objectivity,” on the one hand, and a categorially grounded linkage of perceptions in a judgement, on the other. Walker’s second object can only count as that involved in a judgement of perception. 3) He also shows a faulty grasp of the difference between judgements of experience and judgements of perception, as construing it in terms of a weighty or independent object and a “re-presentational” or “correspondence” model of knowledge as well. As noted earlier, a judgement of perception itself becomes a judgement of experience precisely and only when the two perceptions or representations of the former receive connection through a “concept of an object” or category. A judgement does not become a judgement of experience—i.e. a “scientific” or “objective” judgement—in virtue of the fact that it “agrees” or “corresponds” to some “independent object. —Because, first, things in space and time are not independent objects, they are appearances, existing only in our sensibility, and second, since we are only in relation or “in touch” with our perceptions or representations and not with any independent object, it is thereby made impossible to decide whether the judgement “agrees with” its object, i.e. with something unperceived and inaccessible to the subject. This is supported by Kant in the Prolegomena where he says: “But if I would have it called a judgment of experience, I require this connection to stand under a condition which makes it universally valid. I desire therefore that I and everybody else should always necessarily connect the same perceptions under the same circumstances. Ellington 43 (300).”

4) Lastly, Walkers remarks on page 82 indicate clearly that he has a mistaken grasp of the “transcendental object” at A109 and that it is his position Kant holds the physical, spatial object to exist independently of its representation.

The concept of an object takes us beyond what is or could be given, to the idea of something which is not itself a representation but a cause of ordered sets of representations. As Kant puts it, the representations given to us in sense “in turn have their object - an object which cannot itself be intuited by us, and which may, therefore, be named the non-empirical, that is, transcendental object = x” (A109). In talking about the concept of an object here Kant must mean that of a physical object, an independent particular in the external world.

Kant is here obviously referring to his new immanent “critical” concept of an object required by his “Copernican” Aesthetic, and not to a “weighty object” situated on the far side of experience. Concerning the “concept of an object” Walker says, 1. it “takes us beyond what is or could be given” and 2. “Kant must mean that of a physical object, an independent particular in the external world.” This implies two things: first, that according to Walker (and Allison) the transcendental object is the same as a physical-spatial object, i.e. an appearance, which latter is also construed as “beyond what is given” in intuition, that is, in space and time. This is contradictory, i.e., the object is both in and not in space. Second, it implies that the object is construed as being distinct from representation and as its “cause.” This is clearly the old concept of an independently existing object. Kant’s text just following that cited by Walker makes it plain beyond doubt that the transcendental object does not refer to an object lying beyond the subject and its representations, the physical object in space regarded transcendently or a noumenon, but rather to the unity of transcendental apperception, which, as we have seen, is for Kant the ground of the new objectivity in experience:

The pure concept of this transcendental object, which in reality throughout all our knowledge is always one and the same, is what can alone confer upon all our empirical concepts in general relation to an object, that is, objective reality. This concept cannot contain any determinate intuition, and therefore refers only to that unity which must be met

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with in any manifold of knowledge which stands in relation to an object. This relation is nothing but the necessary unity of consciousness, and therefore also of the synthesis of the manifold, through a common function of the mind, which combines it in one representation. Since this unity must be regarded as necessary a priori . . . [it rests on] the necessary unity of apperception [i.a.]. A110

That is to say, “This concept [of a transcendental object] … refers only to that unity …,” What “unity”? Namely, “This relation [to an object] is nothing but the necessary unity of consciousness.” Moreover, Is this unity an “a posteriori” unity, as Walker contends? No, seeing that “this unity must be regarded as necessary a priori,” and also that “this relation [to a transcendental object] … rests on the transcendental law that all appearances … in experience must stand under the condition of the necessary unity of apperception.” Clearly, according to Kant the concept of a transcendental object is not grounded in the “physical object” construed as lying beyond or behind our representations, as their “cause,” but rather it is grounded in the transcendental unity of apperception and is exclusively a function of the categories.

J.N. Findlay. For the most part Findlay in his book, Kant and the Transcendental Object, is consistent in rightly regarding the Kantian object of experience and all its perceivable qualities, i.e. an appearance, as having no existence apart from experience and the cognitive faculty, understanding and sensibility. However, there are places in his analysis where he errs and falls into contradiction. Consider his opening “introductory” paragraph:

The aim of this book is to interpret and criticize the thought contained in the major writings of Kant from the special standpoint of three certainly important, sometimes divergent, but also often coincident concepts: that of the Transcendental Object, that of the Noumenon, and that of the Thing-in-itself. The philosophy of Kant lays central stress on what appears to the senses, and is seen in the embracing frames of space and time, and also on the formation and use of concepts which enable us, through the continued synthesis of appearances, to arrive at knowledge of what thus appears. But it is also teased by the thought of something which lies beyond or beneath such appearances and their syntheses, and which is, by its underlying presence, somehow able to impart content and necessity to their interconnections, and to prevent us from putting them together in a wholly arbitrary and fanciful manner (see, e.g., CPR, A104). This object is not for Kant different from the object or objects which appear to the senses and which we can judge about and know - innumerable references can be cited to attest such non-difference (see, e.g., CPR, A538-9) - but it is the same object or objects conceived in respect of certain intrinsically unapparent features, and which is in such respects incapable of being judged about or known. . . And we must also conceive of what is thus non-apparent as so affecting us that it can appear before us, or be variously given in experience … And Kant speaks of this our affection by unapparent objects with so little argumentative preamble, that he plainly does not regard it as involving any difficult, problematic step: it is rather, if one so likes to call it, a primordial certainty which stands in no need of justification, even if its lack of empirical content means that it can never be ranked as knowledge. And, as we have said, the whole compulsive non-arbitrary content-element in appearances and experiences has to be attributed to the action of what thus affects us from without, even if it also fits in with our own deep need for such

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imposed regularity . . . But our knowledge and judgment, though not of objects in their non-apparent capacity, nonetheless presupposes the latter: we [“dogmatists”] cannot but conceive of and believe in such non-apparent objects or aspects of objects, eventhough we can have no knowledge of them. . . It must be in some such empty but profound way, which Kant certainly does not elucidate [we wonder why ?!], that we can be primordially aware of objects as affecting our sensibility, though retaining aspects that are not capable of affecting us.

On the one hand, he says (rightly) that for Kant the Thing-in-itself is the same as or not different from “the object which appears to the senses,” i.e. from appearance; meaning that appearance and Thing-in-itself, as Allison and others also hold, are not two distinct entities but rather one and the same entity, differently regarded. On the other hand, he also speaks of the Thing-in-itself as “affecting our sensibility” and “affecting us from without,” i.e. from outside our sensibility or experience (as is clear). This implies that appearance and Thing-in-itself are clearly not the same but in fact two different entities: “appearance” being situated within our experience and sensibility, and the result of affection by a Thing-in-itself; “Thing-in-itself” being situated without our experience and posited as cause or source of affections (—we have already seen that for Kant the Gegenstand that affects-modifies us, at A19, is appearance and not a transcendent Thing-in-itself). He also says that the self-same object of experience or appearance has “certain intrinsic unapparent features,” implying that some of the features of an appearance do not appear to us, or, that an appearance partly has a being for us (i.e. is an object of experience) and partly does not, i.e. has a being also in itself. This is not the Kantian appearance, which is devoid of a being in itself, and thus involves a form of transcendental realism. Moreover, we cannot be said to have a priori knowledge of such an appearance, i.e. specifically of that part of the appearance which is in itself and lies outside of our sensibility; this structure further involves entertaining the notion of a single thing being both cause and effect of itself. Thus Findlay commits himself to contradictorily opposed positions, viz. appearance and the Thing-in-itself are the same and not the same objects.

Findlay also misinterprets the transcendental object at the key A104 text of the A-Transcendental Deduction believing it to refer to a transcendent thing in itself rather than to the immanent unity of apperception and its “concept of a (transcendental) object in general.” Compare:

Kant, however, passes at this point to a very difficult excursis involving both the Transcendental Object, or external Thing-in-itself, and the Transcendental Subject, or internal Thing-in-itself. Neither of these entities can be intuited or known, but the empty thought of them, and of their existence, nonetheless underlies the possibility of experience (A104-10). The Transcendental Object must be thought of as what prevents us from thinking of an object just as we please, and which brings into our thought an element of necessitation, which compels us to synthesize what we think of in a given manner. “For we find that our thought of the relation of all knowledge to its object carries an element of necessity with it, since this relation is what prevents our acts of knowledge from being haphazard or arbitrary, and which determines them a priori in a definite manner. . . (A104-5). . . The Transcendental Object which necessitates such synthesis is, of course, not given to us, but remains an empty X on which our synthesis is taken to be dependent. (145)

Here I can be brief since this passage was treated earlier. It is clear that the transcendental object here is not to be taken as referring to an “external Thing-in-itself” as Findlay believes. The “element of necessity” involved in our knowledge cannot be said to come from an “external Thing-in-itself” since the object in question is said to “determine” our modes of knowledge “a priori in

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some definite fashion.” An “a priori” determining and source of necessary connection rules out a “transcendent” or “external” determining and necessitation which, if conceivable at all, can only be thought of as an “a posteriori” affair. The “a priori” determining and necessitation in question is obviously that grounded in and made possible by the categories. This is confirmed by the discussion which follows. For example, at A105 Kant goes on to say that, “It is only when we have thus produced synthetic unity in the manifold of intuition that we are in a position to say that we know the object, [etc.].” And at A106:

All necessity, without exception, is grounded in a transcendental condition [not transcendent condition, such as a transcendent Thing-in-itself]. There must, therefore, be a transcendental ground of the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of all our intuitions, and consequently also of the concepts of objects in general, and so of all objects of experience, a ground without which it would be impossible to think any object for our intuitions; for this object is no more than that something, the concept of which expresses such a necessity of synthesis (i.a.).

Kant will now name this ground of all necessity at A107: “This original and transcendental condition is no other than transcendental apperception.” It cannot be objected to this that for Findlay the Transcendental Object here is really reducible to and a function of apperception’s concept of an object in general and, as so construed in a wholly immanent manner, is therefore not meant to refer to a transcendent Thing-in-itself behind or beyond the object of experience. His last sentence overrules this objection by saying that “the Transcendental Object which necessitates such synthesis is, of course, not given to us.” That is, to say that it is not given to us is surely to say if not that it exists beyond experience at least that it is not reducible to or identical with the wholly immanent objectivity which is one and the same with the unity of a manifold of intuitions effected solely by a concept of a transcendental object; also cf. A109-10 where Kant clearly identifies the transcendental object with the “concept of an object in general and links both to the unity of apperception.

Finally, there is the curious passage he pens on page 185 where he says, among other things, that Kant’s Refutation of Idealism can be read as holding for transcendent things in themselves as well as for objects in space:

One all-important question remains: Is Kant’s refutation of Idealism only valid within another, more embracing idealism, in which outer things in space and inner acts in time are alike there for the Transcendental Subject, and so without relation to anything beyond subjective experience? This is of course the line taken by a great deal of Neo-Kantian orthodoxy, barricading itself in the fortress of what Kant has said about the Transcendental Unity of Apperception, and only admitting the Thing-in-itself as a limiting concept within those high walls. To be clear, however, as to how Kant really understood his Transcendental Unity of Apperception, we must see that it represents no more than an empty, logical reference to something-or-other as active in all our intuitive and cogitative experience, and as having a deep nature which leads it to translate the impacts it receives from external sources into a set of space-time locations, in such a manner as also to satisfy certain requirements of intelligibility. The entity which has this nature is not given intuitively, and we cannot say in virtue of what intrinsic character it performs what it has to be taken to perform. It is, in fact, a Thing-in-itself, whose existence must be thought and posited [1], but

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whose intrinsic character and modus operandi are unknown. And while this unknowable transcendental self may, in Kant’s view, have generated its own experience, and in its own style, yet it has not done so parthenogenetically: it has been fecundated by affections from other transcendental entities [2], and their differences and connections must, by an inner law of its being, have been translated into phenomenal differences and relations. Without the compulsive impact of other transcendental entities, the Transcendental Subject would certaintly not, in Kant’s view, have generated appearances, nor have appeared to itself [4] and been thought by itself in the process. There is therefore the same demand for something outside of the subject [is this conceivable?] to act on the subject in the case of transcendental self-consciousness, as in the case of empirical self-consciousness. Kant, we may therefore say, has, in the Refutation of Idealism, studiously used the terms “outside” and “external” in an ambiguous manner so as to cover both the phenomenal outsidedness of bodies in space, and the metaempirical, transcendental outsidedness of Things-in-themselves [3] to that Thing-in-itself which is our own transcendental self.

1) He says that the existence of a Thing-in-itself, according to Kant, must be “posited” or assumed. However Kant clearly says one cannot assume or presume its existence. Compare,

We cannot, therefore, positively extend the sphere of the objects of our thought beyond the conditions of our sensibility, and assume besides appearances objects of pure thought, that is, noumena. (A287 B343)

Indeed it may be the case that there is nothing there! Compare Kant’s remarks, “We are completely ignorant whether it [the Thing in itself qua cause] is to be met with in us or outside us, whether it would be at once removed with the cessation of sensibility, or whether in the absence of sensibility it would still remain. (B345) (Also cf. A252)” The last citation also reveals Findlay to be wrong in thinking we must assume a Thing-in-itself existing outside or independently of us as “cause” of appearances. For Kant says 1. that the cause may lie “in us” (e.g. qua our faculty of productive imagination) and 2. that it is possible with the removal of our sensibility there may be no additional object at all, that is to say, appearances may not have or require a super-experiential “cause” after all; in which case it would be senseless to speak of its “character or modus operandi.”

2) Findlay takes for granted in speaking of “affections from other transcendental entities” that the “affecting” objects responsible for perceptions/appearances must be transcendent things in themselves. However, Kant nowhere says this, and in fact there is strong evidence which has been adduced for identifying the affecting object with appearance.

3) Further, he says that the terms “outside” and “external” in the Refutation of Idealism cover both appearances in space and metaempirical “things in themselves” existing “outside of experience” and thus “outside of space” (whatever can this mean?!). This is unwarranted. The argument of the Refutation clearly has validity and applicability to the “existence of objects in space outside me” alone. It cannot be said to prove as well that, e.g., inner experience is only possible on the basis of the existence of nonextended, nonexperiential, invisible “things in themselves”; indeed, it is appearances or objects of experience that so modify our sense of sight that we perceive colors and light (A29) and not a Thing-in-itself). Findlay is also wide of the mark in his view that the Amphiboly chapter of the Analytic “endorses Leibniz’ view of things-in-themselves (page xvi).”

What also should be noted is Findlay’s failure to perceive the insoluble (because pseudo-) problem that arises when one, in a dogmatic and uncritical manner, posits a “thing” taken to exist completely separate from our faculty of representation (containing infinite space) and said to be

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“cause” of the determinations found in appearances. Namely, the problem of how such a non-spatial -material -extended “Thing-in-itself” can ever come to be represented in us, how its properties can “migrate” (to use Kant’s phrase) into our faculty, i.e. how the “gap” existing between us, the knower, and the independent object can be crossed. To merely say, “The Thing-in-itself causes our representations,” does not explain anything, and to remain content with this explanation, as Findlay obviously is, is unjustifiable and unsatisfactory in the extreme, appearing rather as an attempt to avoid the problem entirely.

Also, there is no way one can make intelligible the manner in which productive imagination works together “hand-in-glove with Things-in-themselves to produce a translation of their unknowable order into the symbolism and syntax of sense, time, and space (pg. ix and 139).” Once the two are posited as distinct and apart from each other, it is impossible for them to make contact without introducing a “third thing” to connect them and “pre-establish a harmony” between them; let alone the fact that the concept of a “Thing in itself”, i.e. the thought of a thing apart from thought (or, which is not to be thought) is self-contradictory and unintelligible.

4) Finally, his remark that without the impacts of a Thing-in-itself the Transcendental Subject would not be able to “appear to itself” or be self-conscious is not only destructive of Freedom and morality—the very raison d’etre for the Critique—but contains the consequence that since self-awareness is made dependent upon the extra-experiential Thing-in-itself and its operations the real possibility then arises that if it all at once discontinued its “impacts” on us our self-awareness or our Selfhood would immediately cease as well. The critical fact is that our soul or inner sense is dependent on (or forms a single unity with) outer sense, not on the “Thing-in-itself.”

Gernot Bohme. In section III Die Voraussetzungen of his article, “Kant’s Theorie of Gegenstandskonstitution,” we find evidence of another misconstrual of Kant’ transcendental idealism/realism doctrine. The following texts make it clear that Bohme reads the relation between knowledge or representation and its object in transcendental realist fashion, thus making it incomprehensible how the knower can access or reach the object and its “inner” properties and structure. This also shows he has not grasped the crucial Aesthetic-Analytic interconnection and thus views the object of experience, i.e. appearances, as having, at least in part, a being in themselves and apart from the cognitive faculty. As we know, this view results in “empirical idealism” and not empirical realism or Kant’s view which is erected on the premiss that no separation exists between the subject/knower and the object, the appearance being “in immediate relation” with the knower (A19).

Nun folgt daraus aber, dass man die Dichotomie, so wie Kant es getan hat, gerade nicht ansetzen darf. Fur ihn ist ja das Ding an sich unerkannt und unerkennbar. Diese meinung wird von Kant keinesweg durchgehalten, sie ware auch fur eine Konatitutionstheorie geradezu schadlich. Dann wurde namlich die Erkenntnis auf blosse Selbsterkenntnis der Vernunft hinauslaufen, von Gegenstandserkenntnis ware keine Rede. So werden wir gleich sehen, dass Kant fur den Gegenstand unabhangig von der Erkenntnis jedenfalls Einheit unterstellt. Ferner haben wir gesehen, dass uns von Seiten des - erkenntnisunabhangigen - Gegenstandes auch bei Kant einiges inhaltlich und strukturell gegeben wird: die Qualitaten, der Inhalt der empirichen Gesetze, die Ordnung bei den Organismen. Kant tut allerdings so, als konne er die Annahme umgehen, dass in der Erkenntnis Strukturen und Eigenschaften, die der Gegenstand unabhangig von der Erkenntnis hat, eine Rolle spielen. So bleibt bei ihm unverstandlich, wie wir uberhaupt von diesen Strukturen erreicht werden konnen. (p. 144)

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Also consider the following texts: “Wichtig ist dagegen, dass in diesem Umgang sicherlich Konstanzen und Regelmassigkeiten impliziert sind, die dem Gegenstand “wirklich,” d.h. auch unabhangig von der Erkenntnis, zukommen. (p. 145)” And: “Wir wollen jetzt naher betrachten, welche Bedeutung die Dichotomisierung des Gegenstandes der Erkenntnis in Kants Konstitutionstheorie hat. Kant hat zumindest, worauf auch shon Strawson hingewiesen hat, einen weiteren und einen engeren Begriff von Gegenstand. . . Der erste ist der transzendentale Gegenstand = X (A105ff), der zweite ist der Gegenstand “an der Erscheinung” (A191, B236). Es ist zu fragen, wie sich beide zueinander verhalten. (p. 146)”

Bohme also misinterprets the transcendental object at the key A105 text taking it to refer to a transcendent thing in itself. As he writes:

Eine Bedingung der Objektivitat von Vorstellungen ist ihre Einheit untereinander. Fur Kant allerdings wird diese Bedingung komplizierter, weil er sie innerhalb des Schemas von Ding an sich, Erscheinung und Selbstbewusstsein interpretiert. . . Der hier als Korrelat unserer objektiven Erkenntnis gedachte transzendentale Gegenstand ist also gegenuber der Vorstellung transzendent, . . . (ibid)

As we saw above, the transcendental object at A105 refers not to a transcendent thing in itself but rather to the unity of apperception’s category of an object.

Sherover and Srzednicki. It is only necessary to say that these scholars too in positing a “weighty independent object” declare themselves to be transcendental realists. Sherover for example writes on page 252 of his article “Two Kinds of Transcendental Objectivity: Their Differentiation” that,

Generally speaking, Kant has used the term “Gegenstand,” whether on an empirical or on a transcendental level, to refer to what is conceived by us to be external to us and/or to be independent in its being of the cognitive or intellectual processes wherein an awareness of it becomes an ingredient of our own conscious thought. (i.a.)

—”External to us,” yes, if by “external” is meant empirically and not transcendently external to us, i.e. “in space” and therefore within the boundaries of our sensibility or faculty of representation. —”Independent in its being of the cognitive or intellectual processes etc.,” no. Whether as an appearance or a thing in itself, an object that had a “being independent of” our cognitive processes or faculties could not be an object of knowledge or experience for us. And, as we know, an empirical object or an appearance (table, planet, star) has no being independently of our faculties and sensibility. Such a being capable of independent existence Kant styles a thing “in itself”; strictly speaking, the perceptual thing but viewed as having an existence “in itself.”

Szrednicki is in the same transcendental realist boat as Sherover for in his essay “On Strawson’s Criticism of Kant’s ‘Transcendental Idealism’,” he writes:

[C]an the nature of the world, as independent of us, [this is the mistake: there is no “world independent of us” for Kant, the world is not a thing in itself but an “appearance”] be determined by the logic of observation? Kant is adamant that it cannot. He writes: “If we treat outer objects as things in themselves, it is quite impossible to understand how we could

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arrive at a knowledge of their reality outside us, since we have to rely on the representation that is in us.” A378 If so, what are we perceiving? - the two requirements contradict each other. Kant’s solution is to distinguish the transcendental order of things (in themselves) from the empirical order of the objective things (themselves). The requirement of realism applies only to the second, the sceptical stricture only to the first. However, the first can apply to the empirical world only because empirical judgments are not in fact about the world as it really is, as it is independently of our perceptions and epistemic requirements. What then are we perceiving? Not merely the requirements of our faculty of knowledge, that makes no sense, and especially not if Kant is right that the object of perception must be objective, i.e. independent of that very perception (i.a.). p. 98.

Obviously, the commentator has not mastered the lesson of the Aesthetic since he is constantly speaking of “the world as it really is” and “independently of our perceptions” and further holds it to be Kant’s view that to be “objective” is to have an existence “independently” of the perception of the object, a view resulting in “empirical idealism.” Once again, for Kant objectivity, i.e. the “new” critical immanent objectivity which the Aesthetic prescribes, has to do exclusively with the understanding’s connecting in necessary and universal fashion two or more perceptions via a “concept of an object” in a judgement. “Independent existence” serves as the distinctive characterization and epithet of the “old” pre-critical, dogmatic, correspondence, re-presentational view of the object, which Kant’s Critique, particularly his Analytic, was designed to replace.

Wayne Waxman. In his recent work, Kant’s Model of the Mind, A New Interpretation of Transcendental Idealism, Waxman advances what he calls the “entia imaginaria thesis” according to which space and time are merely products of imagination (p. 14) and exist only in and through imagination (p. 222), as a result of which appearances, the contents of space and time, are to be regarded as “imaginaria” (p. 64), or products of the imagination and not merely as sense-data, existing outside and independently of the (faculty of) imagination, a situation he contends which would render incomprehensible the categories’ necessary and a priori determining of appearances. Although I am very sympathetic with his general thesis, of which there is much to say and commend, his work moreover exhibiting a scholarship of the highest rank, I will confine my remarks to only those aspects of his thesis which bear on my problematic.

In that Waxman regards imagination as coextensive with space and time and everything in them (the latter are not, in his phrase, “superimaginational”) he provides a genuinely transcendental idealist reading of Kant. However, he tumbles into transcendental realism and dogmatism in his contention that sensations or sense data exist “in themselves” or have transcendental reality. A prime error is involved in his “new” un-Kantian interpretation of the terms “transcendental ideality”/”transcendental reality” which can be perceived in the following:

So far as I am aware, commentators have invariably construed the difference between transcendental ideality and reality as corresponding to that between the representational (mind-dependent) and the nonrepresentational. As a result, critics have condemned Kant’s affirmation of things in themselves as a relapse into the very dogmatic metaphysics he so disdained. Even the most sympathetic interpreters concede a measure of validity to the charges of inconsistency and obscurity, and attempt either to mitigate them or, so far as possible, explain them away. However, the interpretation of the transcendental

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ideality/reality distinction offered here suggests that matters may be far simpler and more straightforward than has been supposed. For if Kant’s transcendentally ideal formal representations [space and time] exist only in and through imagination, it follows that anything superimaginational is, for that reason, transcendentally real; hence transcendental reality must be accorded to the sensations furnished in superimaginational a priori synopsis. This is not to claim they are mind-independent, much less sensibility-independent (i.e. supersensible). Nevertheless, in setting sensation matter in direct relation to things in themselves, it seems to me that Kant thereby accorded a kind of transcendental reality to the synoptic manifold itself. After all, what other than that which is itself transcendentally real could stand in need of transcendentally real grounding? . . . the synoptic manifold demands to be accorded the status of intrasensible, or intrarepresentational, transcendental reality.

Waxman’s point is that since space and time, which are transcendentally ideal, exist only in imagination, then whatever is beyond imagination, and beyond (“outside”) space and time, must be transcendentally real, hence since sensations are such things they have to be transcendentally real.

The problem with this is, this is not Kant’s definition of “transcendentally real” or “transcendental realism” (cf. A371-2), which latter occurs when appearances are mistakenly regarded as things in themselves, as capable of a self-subsistent existence apart from sensibility (hence the proper term is extrasensible not “intrasensible”). The main point is that for Kant, and the transcendental realist, we have no direct access or experience of that which is transcendentally real (only of its copy or re-presentation in us, in our sensibility - i.e. for the realist). Waxman desires to call a sensation, e.g. red, hard, that is, what can be experienced, “transcendentally real” in the sense of something having absolute reality (see below). He in effect wants to say that there is an element in appearance, viz. sensation, which is capable of existing in itself and apart from representation. However, even though he speaks of it as “intrarepresentational” the fact that he views it as in itself requires that it have an existence apart from representation—what else can “in itself” mean? The point is that “in itself” and “intrarepresentational” are incompatible. In any case, this is not Kant’s view of appearance, which is transcendentally ideal through and through. What falls within experience and representation can in no way be regarded as “transcendentally real.”

Waxman also misconstrues A20. That is, Kant does not “set sensation matter in direct relation to things in themselves,” but rather to appearance, the object of empirical intuition. Kant nowhere in the Critique makes such a statement or explicit connection. My criticism receives further confirmation in Waxman’s remarks which follow:

Far from doing violence to common sense [?!], the notion of intrarepresentational transcendental reality actually helps restore plausibility to a doctrine commonly believed to be notoriously lacking in it. For surely, even in a transcendental context, it makes sense to suppose that outside imagination lies reality [if imagination and space are coterminous what can or where can “outside” imagination be?]. If so, then reality must be accorded to the superimaginational element within our representation in just the same sense it is accorded to that without it (i.e. things in themselves): absolute reality, the sort only something transcendentally real can ground. What has mainly upset critics of the doctrine is that it seemed an attempt to explain the transcendentally ideal (mind-dependent) by reference to the transcendentally real (mind-independent). But if affection as such is already within the domain of transcendental reality, then, if anything could be its ground, it would have to be a thing in itself. Sensations must be deemed representations in themselves, capable of

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standing in relation to nothing except that which itself exists “in itself.” The only thing essential to grasp about Kant’s conception of the transcendental reality of sense affections [red, cold] is their utter, absolute formlessness, their status as the primary matter of representation. Once this is done, there is no longer any risk of falling into the transcendental realism to which Kant was opposed: the sort which, by attributing intrasensible [for Kant, extrasensible] yet superimaginational reality to space and time, opens the way to their direct correlation with things in themselves.

Clearly, Waxman’s contention is that Kant holds sensations to be transcendentally real, to have absolute reality, what are to be “deemed representations in themselves” as opposed, apparently, to representations not in themselves or existing only “in relation to” the subject and his faculty of representation. It is doubtful whether a “representation in itself,” i.e. a representation which is not to be a representation, i.e. inhering in a mind or representor, can at all be made intelligible. Waxman’s proposal would clearly have the effect of obliterating the distinction between transcendental ideality and reality altogether, that is, if absolute reality “must be accorded to the superimaginational element within our representation in just the same sense it is accorded to that without it (i.e. things in themselves).” Obviously “absolute reality” for him means what is capable of existing in itself and out of relationship with our cognitive faculties. If a sensation had such an existence, “transcendental idealism” would suffer all loss of meaning.

Waxman is also oblivious to the infinite regress and thus defect involved in his (“reflective”) implicit statement that one absolute reality, i.e. sensation, requires grounding in a second absolute reality, i.e a thing in itself. In the first place, an absolute reality is something which, as self-subsistent or self-grounded, is not in need of grounding. Secondly, if it is necessary to posit a thing in itself, an absolute reality, to “ground” sensation, also an absolute reality (“in just the same sense”), then one must go on and further posit another “thing in itself” or absolute reality to “ground” the thing in itself, the ground of sensation, and so on forever.

Thus, although Waxman’s thesis that space and time are grounded in imagination has much to commend it, as being transcendentally idealistic in its essence, his endowment of sensations with an existence “in themselves” leads him ineluctably into a curious variety of transcendental realism and “realistic” reading of the Critique.

4.2. Sallis, Beck, Fichte, and Wolff

John Sallis is among the few, keener contemporary interpreters of Kant who, in his masterful work The Gathering of Reason, is quite clear on the issue as to whether the object of experience can exist prior to or without the contribution of Thought or conceptualization. Compare his remarks on p. 38:

What, then, must be the character of the objectifying function and of the object to which appearances are attached through this function? Kant continues: “It is easily seen that this object must be thought only as something in general = x, since outside our knowledge we have nothing which we could set over against this knowledge as corresponding to it” (A104). Here there are two essential indications. (1) Since the object is not given, it can enter into the structure of experience only as something thought, as something posited by thought. But (2) as what is it posited? ... It is posited as object in general, posited as having

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only those determinations which anything must have in order to be an object (in the most general sense). [Further] ...pure understanding represents the objective form for the matter of appearances; it posits the form under which that matter must be brought by which it must be informed, in order to be objectified and thus constituted as appearance of an object. (i.a.)

[And especially] For appearances to be related to an object requires that they possess that unity, those forms of unity [the categories], that is thought in the transcendental object (or, correlatively, in the categories). In other words, appearances can be objectified only by being made to embody that unity, only through the synthesis of the manifold: “It is only when we have thus produced synthetic unity in the manifold of intuition that we are in a position to say that we know the object” (A105). Even more directly: “an object is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united” (B137). The objectification of appearances, the constitution of appearances as appearing object, the bringing forth of the object into presence, takes place as the gathering of the manifold of appearances into the forms of unity defined by the concepts of pure understanding. (i.a.)

Clearly, in the absence of the objectifying, “object-making,” function of Thought, experience would be without objects. Sensation, intuition, and perception alone cannot yield an object, only the matter (for an object) which after having been in-formed by Thought first becomes an object of knowledge/cognition/experience [the key of course is to realize, knowledge implies universality and necessity which cannot come from sense-experience, - the Subject, i.e. qua universal and necessary Thought, alone can contribute this ingredient to experience - this ingredient is nondivorceable from and integral to the Kantian concept of an object or objectivity, which again the Realists have overlooked (also: for Kant Form and Matter are elements in a single unity, in isolation they are meaningless - the truth is the whole)].

J.S. Beck, a contemporary of Kant, also is aware that it is a mistake to think of an object independently of thought, or as given in intuition prior to thought, or in general of an object separated from a representation. In his November 11, 1791 letter to Kant he urges Kant to omit the definition of an “intuition” as what is in “immediate relation to an object” since Kant teaches in the Analytic that “a representation does not become objective until it is subsumed under the categories” and also that “intuition similarly acquires its objective character only by means of the application of categories to it...”Consider further his remarks in The Standpoint from which Critical Philosophy is to be Judged, Riga 1796. For example:

[W]hat on earth can it mean to say that my representation agrees with its object, yet, that the two are entirely different from each other? ...Where are we going to posit this bond between the representation and its object? To say that the object affects me, and thereby produces the representations, amounts to saying nothing... To assume in respect of representations a relation corresponding to one that obtains between objects is senseless. We must conclude, that the concept of a bond uniting the representation and its object has no object; it is an entirely empty concept. It cannot be denied, therefore, that the idealist’s move to deny any such bond is philosophically sound. Dogmatic philosophers assert the bond, but are unable to indicate in any way [where to find] it. Anyone who has the notion that he can refute idealism fails to notice its point of truth...

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[And] I wish that for once we could at least get the right feeling about how compelling idealism is. For the first step in comprehending the spirit of critical philosophy is an honest disclosure of its force, of how irrefutable it is from the point of view of dogmatic philosophy, as what follows will show...

[These remarks apply especially to today] The source of the error [of all dogmatic, uncritical philosophy] is precisely that, because the philosophy lacks a transcendental standpoint, it ignores the original representing completely; and hence it tries to find the connection of our representations to objects, or rather, the bond uniting the two, in discursive thinking. And for us [Kantians] too - as long as we have not mastered this transcendental standpoint ourselves - all the [incredible but true] claims of critical philosophy will inevitably remain unintelligible. We may, of course, accustom ourselves to the language of the Critique; but if we have not attained to its standpoint a scale will still cover our eyes, so that, even though we walk in the light of day, we still shall not be able to see the objects surrounding us. In a word, whether we admit it or not, the critical philosophy will still look to us just like all the other systems that went before it—as if, like them, it were piling empty claim on empty claim, and waiting all the time for another system which will finally retire it to its proper place, albeit only in the history of man’s unsuccessful efforts...[Between Kant and Hegel, tr. di Giovanni & Harris, pgs 206-209]

J.G. Fichte, standing on Beck’s and Reinhold’s as well as Kant’s shoulders, has a still deeper insight into the inseparability of representation and object (immanent or transcendent). Compare his illuminating and incisive remarks in his early essay A Comparison between Prof. Schmid’s System and the Wissenschaftslehre, Jena 1796:

Accordingly, [our] analysis allows the concept and the thing to come into being at the same time, and this makes it possible for the mind’s inner eye to see that the concept and the thing are one and the same - merely regarded from two different sides. This is the same thing that Kant expressed by saying that the concept and the intuition (or, in the language of the Wissenschaftslehre, the “thing”) could not be separated from each other.*

*[Fichte’s footnote] Kant begins his Critique with the I qua mere subject [not subject-object], and this is the source of the idea (which the Kantians have so laughably misinterpreted) that empty concepts exist a priori. But a subject is always related to an object and, at least in the obscurity of representation, is inseparable from an object. [!] Therefore, Kant allows us (provisionally) to carry into the Critique the ordinary, commonsense view of the object as something external to the I. The I does not become an object until the middle of the book, in the doctrine of the schematism of the imagination. But what then happens to that thing in itself with which one has previously burdened oneself? All the misunderstandings of Kant’s writings are based upon the thing in itself, and yet without the thing in itself one would have been able to understand nothing at all. Hence the complaint voiced by the excellent Jacobi... Of course it is true that the passage which justifies one in dispensing with this tool [namely, the thing in itself] is found in the middle of the Critique. On the other hand, no one who has already deposited this burden [viz. the thing in itself (hence the need for a Phenomenology of Spirit - to demonstrate the

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impossibility of such a thing)] at the door is admitted into the Wissenschaftslehre. For this reason the Wissenschaftslehre has usually been not so much misunderstood as not understood at all [Fichte’s italics throughout]. [Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, tr. Breazeale, p. 325]

So, Beck and Fichte both were fully aware of Kant’s ploy of letting the reader enter the Critique with her accustomed dogmatic belief in independently existing objects or the Thing in itself and then requiring her to drop it in the middle of the book where he advances his new concept of an “Object” (i.e. of a “Subject-Object”) - i.e. Kant realized the reader could not grasp the new concept at once, so he gradually led her up to it. Indeed, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel all realized that the concept of a “Thing in itself” or “independently existing object” was a bogus concept, that in truth one could not separate being from thought (representation), they must in truth be identical. Fichte and Schelling simply start out with this “assumed” identity and thus give no entree or “ladder” for natural/dogmatic/bifurcated consciousness into True Science (cp., B860), hence the need for an “introduction” into “subject-object identity” philosophy, viz. a “phenomenology”.

Robert Paul Wolff whom I will not be permitted to examine, is also, with Sallis, one of the contemporary interpreters of Kant who have a solid grasp on the new “immanent” concept of an object and the true nature of the critical standpoint. Compare his remarks found in the concluding chapter of his book, Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity:

The epistemological turn is the progressive substitution of epistemological for ontological or metaphysical considerations. It is the recognition that the knowing subject can never be ignored or bracketed out, etc, etc. (320)Despite [Descartes’] dramatic conte de fee of a deceiving devil, he still viewed his problem as that of reestablishing contact between the conscious subject, whose substantial nature he never doubted, and an independent objective world order. . . [With Kant the object is no longer an ontologically independent object, but has been reduced to a mere “that which”, etc.]

What Kant has done in this two-stage transformation is to substitute certain logical characteristics of judgments for the illegitimate notion of an independent universe of objects.He has thereby taken the first important step toward solving Descartes’ problem . . . [It may be objected] Universality and necessity may indeed be among the marks of knowledge, but there is also the belief in an object “out there” (ob-ject), standing over against (gegen-stand) the subject. . . To this more sophisticated objection—that the “ordinary sense” includes and must include the idea of an ontologically independent object—there can be no answer beyond a careful reiteration of all the reasons why such a demand is self-contradictory …; whoever wishes to know what an object is like independently of the conditions of his knowing what it is like—must then simply be dismissed as unserious. In the terminology of a later philosophical school, he needs to be cured, not answered.10 (322-23)

10. R. P. Wolff, Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity 320.

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4.3. Common Objections

All common objections to my interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism—viz. that the object of experience cannot exist apart from experience—reduce to two:

1) “Surely objects I am not now perceiving, e.g. my office, or kitchen, or a planet in another galaxy, can be said to “exist” even though I or no one else is presently perceiving them,” and2) “This view implies that objects must simply ‘spring into existence whenever a perceiver comes near (R.C.S. Walker11).’”

Both objections were already met by me below in the discussion at p. 101. Briefly: Since a posteriori and a priori space are one space and are in me, and since all appearances in space have no existence apart from me, objects (appearances) I am not presently perceiving, must be regarded as nonetheless as “within me” and thus as having no independent or self-subsistent being of their own. They are to be considered as e.g. the objects on my desk which are just outside the focus or (a la Husserl) ray of my direct consciousness. That is, e.g. I am right now in immediate relation with a given distant star, only I am not at this moment looking at it or other objects block its view. (See Appendix On Intuition and Perception)

The Real Problem with the Realist (Analytic) Critics. Hegel: The First Attitude of Thought to Objectivity.

Briefly. In his Encyclopedia Science of Logic Hegel distinguishes Three attitudes of Thought to Objectivity which can be correlated with three epochs of thought, 1) the Ancient, 2) the Modern, and 3) the Modern’s completion. The First Attitude (Ancients), that of common sense and the sciences, naively and unquestioningly assumed that an immediate correspondence or agreement obtained between Thought (Concepts) and Objects (Things, Substances). The Second Attitude (Moderns) beginning with Descartes (in his Meditations, 1641) begins to question or doubt this assumed identity or congruence of Concept and external Object. This calling into question of the traditional Greek assumption marked a New Epoch of thought or philosophy, whose Task then became one of removing the doubt, i.e. of demonstrating the connection or (if so be) identity between Concepts (Judgements) and Objects (objective states of affairs/Beings). The Third Attitude of Thought to Objectivity coincides with the fulfillment of this Task, i.e. the accomplished proof or certitude with respect to Thought’s relation to/identity with Being or Objectivity. It can further be said that the Kantian Realists—the majority of which hail from the Analytic School, which is immersed in the uncritical standpoint of common sense and the positive sciences—are still stuck in the first attitude of thought to objectivity (as also are the pragmatists, e.g. Rorty, and others). That is, they take for granted the correspondence of concepts/statements and their objects (conceived as “independently existing entities”). —To get to the third attitude they must first get to the second or Modern standpoint and enter into its problematic. Without having done this, a correct appreciation of Kant’s standpoint, the “door” to the third, is not possible.

11. R.C.S. Walker, Kant 110.

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4.4. Final Assessment of Kant and His Critics

Kant is truly the watershed philosopher of the modern period. However, since he left the residue of a “Thing in itself,” according to the letter, and failed to “systematize” his vision and standpoint and turn it into a “system of science (cf., B866),” which all can learn and into which the empirical sciences can be taken up, he must be regarded as at the same time as merely a “transitional” figure.” That is, as standing between the old way of doing philosophy—which starts from an independent being, and the new way—which starts from the I or faculty of presentation.

Thus in conclusion I am constrained to submit, as a result of this study, that what must be regarded as the great divider of all the Kantians and the touchstone for determining whether one has grasped the Spirit of Kant or merely the letter is none other than this:—Namely, whether one can frankly say they embrace the following proposition or not:

That the object of experience-perception-representation has no existence in itself, as an “independently existing entity,”12 apart from or beyond experience. That is,—It has only a Being for us, and no being for itself at all.That is: The (re)presentation and the object, presenting and presented, are but two sides of the same thing (or unity—and this is all there is.]—In a word, the object is —

an A P P E A R A N C E

- not a “thing in itself.”13

To a brief viewing of the different and more “systematic” presentations or versions of the transcendental idealist vision a la Fichte and Hegel, I now turn.

12 I enclose this in quotes since it has no sense and cannot be thought.

13 I enclose this in quotes—”under erasure” for the deconstructionists—for the same reason (This forces one to quit the abstract Beyond—and come all the way to Presence, to the Present, from which man never should have egressed.

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