1)
Introduction
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claims,
[T]he human being
. . . is obviously in one part phenomenon, but in another part, namely in
regard to certain faculties, he is a merely intelligible object, because the
actions of this object cannot at all be ascribed to the receptivity of
sensibility. We call these faculties
understanding and reason; chiefly the latter is distinguished quite properly
and preeminently from all empirically conditioned powers, since it considers
its objects merely according to ideas . . ..
[R]eason does not give in to those grounds which are empirically given .
. ., but with complete spontaneity it makes its own order according to ideas.
(A546-7/B574-5, see too A299/B355, A550/B578;
Kant’s contrast between certain human faculties and “empirically conditioned powers” seems to suggest that reason and the understanding are not susceptible to empirical influence. Kant’s claim, in his lectures on empirical psychology, that these higher faculties are “self-active” (28:228) and rest on “spontaneity” as opposed to “receptivity” (29: 880, 28:584) seems to confirm this suspicion. Throughout his philosophy, in fact, Kant insists that the understanding and reason operate spontaneously, independent of determination by empirical grounds.
Nonetheless, Kant insists, that “even . . . reason . . . must exhibit an empirical character,” that is, must fit into a series of natural causes and effects (A549/B577, see too A803/B831). And in his lectures on ethics, Kant is adamant about this further determination of reason:
Even one’s reason, as subjected to the laws of nature, can be considered devoid of all freedom . . . . Every act of thought or reflection is itself an occurrence in nature . . . though this actus is an inner occurrence, since it takes place in the man himself. (27:502-4)
With respect to the understanding, too, and in fact for “all cognition[s]” (A86/B118, my emphasis),
we can search in experience . . . for the occasional causes of their generation, where the impression of the senses provide the first occasion for opening the entire power of cognition to them . . . . Such a tracing of the first endeavors of our power of cognition to ascend from individual perceptions to general concepts is without doubt of great utility . . .. (A86-87/B118-119)
This empirical investigation is to be carefully distinguished from “a deduction of the pure a priori concepts,” but for the “quastio facti” seeking the explanation of the “possession of a pure cognition” (A86-87/B118-119) one can give an “empirical deduction, which shows how a concept is acquired through experience and reflection on it” (A85/B117). For Kant, all mental phenomena are causally determined, even those that are rooted in “spontaneous” higher cognitive faculties such as reason or the understanding.
What is more, Kant even suggests that specific experiences play a causal role in bringing about higher cognitions. The “impressions of the senses” are occasioning causes for acts of reason (A86/B118), and
[t]here is no doubt whatever that all our cognition begins with experience. . . . As far as time is concerned . . . no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition [my emphasis] begins. (B1, see too 29:951-2)
Kant makes this claim precisely in the context of distinguishing a priori cognitions, the most “pure” of the cognitions associated with the higher faculty of desire, from empirical ones. As he explains, “although all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not all on that account arise from experience,” and in that sense that there might well be “cognition independent of experience” (B1-2, see too A85-7/B117-9). Even if not all cognitions are empirically justified, they are all empirically caused. In terms of empirical psychology, one can find a cause for any cognition, and that cause will always be an experience of some kind. But this does not mean that the content of the cognition is limited by the experience that causes it, nor that it is justified by that experience.[1]
The distinction between empirical causes of cognition and a priori justifications for certain cognitions is primarily important for Kant because it helps him make sense of how a priori synthetic judgments are possible (since, contra Locke and other empiricists, the empirical origin of a cognition need not preclude a non-empirical account of the nature and status of that cognition). But also has implications for Kant’s empirical psychology. In particular, Kant’s emphasis on a priori cognition takes place in the context of a transcendental idealism that reconciles (or tries to reconcile) a priori justifications for cognition with empirical, causal accounts of how those cognitions arise. And this means that his transcendental philosophy is compatible with, and may even require,[2] a fully empirical account of human cognition in terms of occasioning causes. In psychology, Kant can seek “natural laws of the thinking self” based on “observations about the play of our thoughts” (A347/B405).
Elucidating Kant’s empirical account of cognition is valuable for at least four reasons.[3] First, given Kant’s claims about the spontaneity of the understanding (and reason), one might reasonably think that these faculties are not susceptible to empirical explanation. Allen Wood, for example, has argued that Kant “holds that empirical psychology is excluded in principle from understanding all rational deliberation” (Wood 1984: 83), and Fred Rauscher has found it necessary to argue at length for an interpretation of Kant that “allows reason to be an entirely natural cause within appearances” (Rauscher 2006: 3).[4] This paper will not only help support Rauscher’s claim that reason can be seen as a natural cause in appearances, but will provide specific details about the operation of that empirical reason.
Second, as Patrick Frierson has pointed out, “a complete empirical account of human action depends upon explaining the causes of each kind of cognitive state as well as the grounds for connecting those cognitive states to the states of feeling and desire to which they give rise” Frierson 2005: 16). Frierson has provided an account of the connections between cognitive states and states of feeling and desire (in Frierson 2005), but he has not yet shown that cognitive states themselves arise in an empirically explicable way. For the sake of a complete empirical account of human action (the importance of which is emphasized in Frierson 2005), an empirical account of cognition is required.
Third, Kant’s empirical account of cognition offers a helpful alternative empirical psychology to accounts offered by empiricists such as Locke and Hume. In particular, Kant, even in his empirical psychology, insists upon the importance for ordinary human cognition of the understanding as distinct from the imagination. In contrast to Hume, who ascribes concepts such as causation and substance to the principles of the imagination (custom, habit, association), Kant argues that insofar as the imagination affects one’s understanding of these concepts, one is likely to be systematically led astray. And Kant makes this claim in his empirical psychology, as a claim about the ways that different cognitive faculties interact.[5]
Finally, Kant’s empirical account of human cognition can help philosophers understand Kant’s transcendental (non-empirical) account of cognition. Howard Caygill has shown the role that Kant’s psychological and anthropological reflections played in Kant’s development of the view that “sensibility and the understanding are generically different but also capable of being conjoined” (Caygill 2003: 188-9). During the period that Kant developed and refined the Critical philosophy, he lectured on empirical psychology, anthropology, and logic. In all three contexts, Kant’s reflections on the empirical nature of human cognition provided a context within which his transcendental idealism developed.
In this paper, I lay out Kant’s empirical account of human cognition. Because Kant did not publish any work devoted to an empirical account of cognition, I start with a section on the sources for Kant’s account. I then turn in section three to a general overview of Kant’s empirical account of cognition, followed by sections on Kant’s empirical account of sensibility (section four) and of the properly functioning higher cognitive faculties (section five). Finally, I turn in sections six and seven to a discussion of ways in which the higher faculties can diverge from proper function, both in the context of ordinary understandings and in cases of mental illness.
2) Sources for Kant’s Empirical Account of Cognition
None of Kant’s best known published works – the three Critiques and the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals – lay out an empirical account of cognition in any systematic way. The Critique of Pure Reason, in fact, explicitly distinguishes itself from any empirical study of human reason (A64/B89). And at least one of Kant’s published works – The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science – almost seems to preclude the possibility of a rigorous empirical psychology (see 4:471).[6] In fact, Kant’s empirical account of human cognition never reaches the status of a science in the strictest sense, and he certainly considered his empirical account less significant than his more substantive transcendental project. Nonetheless, Kant did articulate a coherent and fairly detailed empirical account of human cognition.
Kant’s empirical account of human cognition has three primary sources, from which I draw the account in the rest of this paper. First, Kant’s lectures on metaphysics included a substantial section on “empirical psychology,” of which an empirical account of cognition formed a part. These lectures provide the most direct empirical treatment of human cognition. They also lay out the overall structure of human psychology, of which the different faculties of cognition are a part. And these lectures include some very important explanations of cognition from an empirical point of view, such as the explicit claim that a priori cognitions are not innate (28:233). Fortunately, several extant copies of these notes are available, providing “confirmation of the general . . . reliability of the various sets of notes” (Ameriks and Narragon 1997: xiv).[7] Unfortunately, these lectures on empirical psychology give only the briefest accounts of the faculties of cognition. They cannot be a primary source for a detailed empirical account of cognition.
In the lectures on empirical psychology, Kant gives a clue as to a further source for detail about his empirical psychology. In a late psychology lecture, Kant briefly discusses the cognitive faculty, but adds that “anthropology will treat of this in more detail” (28:585, see too 29:907). Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (along with his related lectures and handwritten remarks on anthropology) gives considerably more detail about the cognitive faculties, especially in Kant’s discussions of various cognitive talents and disorders. Unfortunately, Kant’s anthropology gives detail about these faculties in a particular context. His anthropology is meant to be both pragmatic and popular. Because it is pragmatic, anthropology presents empirical accounts of cognition not simply for the sake of information but in order to put to use those accounts, and this emphasis limits the range of Kant’s discussion.[8] The popularity of Kant’s anthropology, emphasized in the letter to Herz where Kant first introduced his interest in anthropology as a discipline (see 10: 146) and reemphasized throughout Kant’s lectures (see 25: 853, 1213), also limits the sort of details that Kant includes, to those that are “customary and interesting” (9:148).[9] Because it is both pragmatic and popular, the more detailed empirical account of human cognition in Kant’s Anthropology tends to give only those details that fit into an entertaining and easily accessible discussion with a practical use.
One
final source for Kant’s empirical account of human cognition is his logic,
especially as presented in his lectures on logic, where Kant leaves himself
room to diverge from logic proper into “applied” (B77/A53) logic, which treats
of human cognition in a more empirical way.
As in the case of the lectures on metaphysics, these notes can generally
be taken as reliable, although any particular passage may be transcribed
falsely. In the case of the logic, we
also have a logic textbook published by Kant’s student Gottlob Benjamin
Jaesche, prepared at Kant’s request (though probably without Kant’s
involvement).[10]
It might seem out of place to look for causal laws in Kant’s logic. In his lectures on logic, Kant explicitly distinguishes the study of the mind involved in logic from that of psychology. He explains,
Some
logicians, to be sure, do presuppose psychological principles in
logic. But to bring such principles into
logic is just as absurd as to derive morals from life. If we were to take principles from
psychology, i.e. from observations concerning our understanding, we would
merely see how thinking does take place and how it is under
various subjective obstacles and conditions; this would lead then to cognition
of merely contingent laws. In
logic, however, the question is not about contingent but about necessary
rules; not how we do think, but how we ought to think. (Jasche Logic,
Laws of logic are necessary laws,
not derived from observation, and hence distinct from the psychological laws
that actually govern the connections between higher cognitions. At the same time, however, Kant claims in his
logic that “like all our other powers, the understanding in
particular is bound in its actions to rules, which we can investigate” (Jasche
Logic,
This
apparent conflict can be resolved by keeping in mind two important details in
Kant’s distinction between logic and psychology. First, Kant’s separation of the two is
unidirectional. Kant warns against using
psychological generalizations in logic, not about using logical laws as
guides in empirical psychology. Second,
Kant’s account of how the mind actually works is not simply a
matter of logic. Logic describes how the
understanding ought to operate, and this will describe how the
understanding in fact operates only if the understanding is functioning
properly. Often the understanding does
function properly, and in those cases, Kant’s logic provides an account of the
psychological laws governing the connections between higher cognitions. But human minds are also susceptible to
“subjective obstacles and conditions” (Jasche Logic,
As already noted, Kant’s psychology and anthropology give some descriptions of these variations from normal function. But, as J. Michael Young points out, “Kant spent a great deal of time in his logic lectures talking about matters which, on his own account, do not belong to logic proper” (Young 1992: xix). Among the most important of these matters is Kant’s account of error, in the course of which he offers psychological accounts of how the understanding can deviate from proper function. One the one hand, Kant asks “How is it possible for a power to depart from its own laws?” and even claims that “the understanding itself cannot err” (24:721; see too 9: 54), suggesting that the laws governing the actual conduct of the understanding are just those that govern the way it ought to be, at least in the absence of influences external to the causal laws governing the understanding itself. Nonetheless, he does insist that humans err (e.g. at 16: 283-4 and 24:18) and even that “every error is to be regarded as a phenomenon that is worthy of an explanation” (24: 296). Such explanations are important tangents in Kant’s lectures on logic, and a proper focus of his anthropology. But by structuring his overall account of mental operations in terms of proper function and deviation, Kant can – without conflating logic and psychology – apply the insights of his logic proper to flesh out his empirical description of human action.
It
should not be too surprising that Kant analyzes the causal laws governing the
higher faculty of cognition by reference to logic, the rules governing its
proper function, and focuses in his anthropology and, improperly, in his
lectures on logic, on “deficiencies and diseases of the soul with respect to
its cognitive powers” (7:202f.). Even
the most ardent empiricist accounts of mind (at least in the 18th
century) turn to apparently logical laws when explaining the operation of
healthy higher cognitive faculties.[13] When Hume sets out to determine the faculty
responsible for “the transition from an impression present to the memory or
sense to the idea of an object, which we call cause or effect,” he asks
“Whether experience produces the idea by means of the understanding or of the
imagination; whether we are determined by reason to make the transition, or by
a certain association and relation of perceptions” (Hume 1740: I.iii.vi.4, pp.
88-9). To determine whether or not
reason is the faculty responsible for this transition, he appeals to a
“principle” that, in accordance with basic laws of deductive logic, would
justify this transition. Hume uses the
apparently logical claim that the transition is not deductively
justified to justify the psychological claim that the cognitive faculty
responsible for the transition is not the understanding (or reason). In this context, Hume treats the laws of
logic as the causal laws governing the operation of reason. In appealing to logic as a source of causal
laws of a properly functioning understanding, Kant’s account is no less
causal-determinist than Hume’s.[14] And in explaining various ways in which the
higher faculties can fall short of proper operation, Kant’s causal account is
actually more sophisticated than Hume’s.[15]
3) The overall structure of Kant’s empirical account of human cognition
Kant’s empirical account of cognition is not laid out in a wholly systematic way. His observations on the causal influences on cognition range from various important taxonomic classifications and specific causal laws to off-the-cuff observations, like the fact that “the mind is more disposed [for reflection] in the morning than in the evening” or that “one is perhaps ill disposed for deep reflection when one comes from a comedy” (25:554). But from these diverse claims about cognition, it is possible to put together a coherent, systematic, and plausible account. Patrick Frierson has described how the structure of Kant’s empirical psychology, including his account of cognition, can be organized around Kant’s notion of “faculties” [Vermögen]. As Frierson explains,
Kant . . . shifts . . . to a threefold distinction between the faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire (cf. 29:877). Each of these three faculties includes several distinct basic powers, none of which is reducible to others . . . . (Frierson 2005: 7; see too Hatfield 1990, Beck 1969, and Henrich 1957/58 and 1994).
Human cognitions are rooted in the “cognitive faculty,” which Kant distinguishes from both feeling and cognition. Within the cognitive faculty, Kant further distinguishes
between “higher” and “lower” faculties of cognition. The lower cognitive faculty is referred to broadly as “sensibility” (Sinnlichkeit) and includes the senses (Sinne) and the imagination, each of which is further subdivided (see 7:140-1, 153ff.; 25:29f., 269f.; 28:59f., 230f., 585, 672f., 869f., 737f.; and 29:882f.). The senses include the five outer senses as well as inner sense, and the imagination includes memory, anticipation of future events, and the “productive” or “fictive” imagination. Kant refers to the higher faculty of cognition by the general term “understanding” (Verstand) and includes within it three specific cognitive powers: reason, the understanding (also Verstand) in a narrow sense, and the power of judgment.[16]
In addition to this faculty psychology, Kant’s account of human cognition, like his empirical accounts of human feeling, desire, and action (see Frierson 2005), depends on the notions of basic power and natural predispositions. A “basic power,” for Kant, refers to the ground in the nature of a particular substance for the changes that substance undergoes: “the concept of cause lies in the concept of power” (28:564, see too A204/B250). Different powers reflect different specific laws of causation. Within the faculty of cognition, the five senses, imagination, understanding, and reason are all distinct causal powers, so each is governed by its own set of causal laws.[17] Because basic powers are the key to causal explanations of phenomena, Kant claims that “all physics, of bodies as well as of minds, the latter of which is called psychology, amounts to this: deriving diverse powers, which we know only through observations, as much as possible from basic powers” (28:564).[18] This reductive approach has limits. Kant seeks to minimize the appeal to distinct basic powers – reducing a variety of erroneous principles of judgment to a few basic powers, for example – but he insists contra Wolff and Baumgarten that powers such as the senses, imagination, and reason are all distinct basic powers, irreducible to a single sort of “representation.” In both physics and psychology, Kant’s goal is to reduce the variety of observable phenomena to as few basic powers as possible (but no fewer) and to explain the laws according to which those powers operate.
Within biology, Kant’s account of basic powers is linked to his account of “natural predispositions” [Naturanlagen]. In the Critique of Teleological Judgment, Kant explains that those basic powers most relevant to biology and psychology are natural predispositions.[19] Like other basic powers, Kant does not give causal accounts of the origins of these predispositions; they can be classified but not reduced to any more basic level of explanation in terms of efficient causes.[20] As he explains in his “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History,” “we must begin with something that human reason cannot derive from prior natural causes – that is, with the existence of human beings,” including all of their natural predispositions (8:110). Predispositions include such things as instincts, but Kant also identifies the major powers of the cognitive faculties as natural predispositions (A66, 6:444-5, 7: 322, 25:1172, 29:915). Thus the imagination with its laws of association, for example, is a natural predisposition, and while Kant makes use of this predisposition in his causal accounts, he does not causally explain the origin of the predisposition itself.
Kant’s explicit invocation of basic powers, and especially his willingness to allow that basic powers can be natural predispositions, leads him to a two-dimensional causal account of human cognition. For any particular mental state, there are various “occasional causes” (A86/B118), the sort of antecedent states that traditionally play a role in empiricist accounts of causation.[21] But these causes always bring about their effects by means of an underlying basic power, what one might call a substantial (as opposed to an occasioning) cause, or what Kant sometimes refers to as a “ground.” Thus in Kant’s empirical accounts of human faculties, one can distinguish between the occasioning causes of a particular mental state and the underlying grounds that determine the way in which particular occasioning causes give rise to particular mental states. In some cases, these underlying grounds will themselves be effects of prior occasioning causes. With respect to the imagination, for example, the ground of a connection between two mental states will often be a habit, a habit which is in turn the result of past experience of conjunction between the two mental states. In other cases, however, the underlying grounds will be natural predispositions, for which no further explanation in terms of antecedent causes is appropriate. Ultimately, a complete Kantian causal account depends upon tracing all mental states to preceding occasioning causes and the natural predispositions that provide the ultimate[22] grounds of those mental states. As already noted, “all . . . psychology amounts to . . . deriving diverse powers . . . as much as possible from basic powers” (28: 564).
In the rest of this paper, I use the following general framework for laying out this two part Kantian account:
Occasioning Cause à Mental State
↑
Underlying Ground
The horizontal arrow (à) reflects causation of the empiricist sort, where a particular state or event brings about a succeeding one. The vertical arrow (↑) reflects Kant’s broadly Liebnizian commitment to the importance of underlying substantial grounds for (occasioning) causal connections between particular states or events.[23]
In the next section, I briefly lay out Kant’s empirical account of the lower faculties of cognition. My primary purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive treatment of these lower faculties.[24] Rather, I use my discussion of them to illustrate the general framework of Kant’s empirical explanations of cognition, in order to show how Kant applies the same framework to the higher powers (judgment, the understanding, and reason). As I show in the next section,
Kant’s causal accounts of the nature and function of the cognitive powers begin by distinguishing (and categorizing) difference basic powers of the soul and laying out causal laws that govern the normal and healthy functioning of each cognitive power. He goes on to describe variations from this normal and healthy function, emphasizing negative variations due to defects that can arise with respect to one’s cognitive powers.[25] The rest of the paper (sections five through seven) then focuses on the higher faculties, showing first how these function in normal and healthy human beings, then laying out some of the ordinary ways in which human cognition diverges from “healthy” understanding (especially through prejudice), and finally discussing the more extraordinary divergences from healthy function (mental illnesses).
4) Kant’s Empirical Account of the Lower Cognitive Faculty
The lower faculty of cognition includes the senses and the imagination, and Kant explains various causal laws governing the behavior of each. With respect to the senses, Kant is brief. Unlike Hume, however, who simply argues that “impressions . . . of sensation . . . arise in the soul originally, from unknown causes” (Hume 1740: I.I.ii.1, p. 8),[26] Kant at least offers some explanation of the origin of sensory ideas.[27] He says, for instance, that “the sense of touch lies in the fingertips and the nerve endings (papillae) and enables us to discover the form of a solid body by means of contact with its surface” and that “sight is a sense of indirect perception appearing to a certain organ (the eyes) sensitive to agitated matter, namely light, which . . . is an emanation by which the locus of an object in space is determined” (7: 155, 156). Kant gives similar accounts of hearing, smell, and taste. These general accounts of purely sensory cognitions involve mechanical interactions between objects and sensory organs. Connections between these mechanical interactions and corresponding sensory cognitions are simply posited as natural predispositions. For example, Kant explains, “Nature seems to have endowed man . . . with this organ [of touch].” The organs are the basic powers of sensory cognitions, and they are not further explained mechanically in Kant’s account.
Laying out this account of the senses in terms of the framework of natural predispositions described in section three, one gets the following causal structure.
Physical contact of external objects with sense organ à Sensory perception
↑
Nature of Sense Organ
(A natural predisposition)
For example, in the case of light,
Agitated matter (light) hits the eyes à Perception of lighted object
↑
Nature of Eyes
The particular ways in which external objects bring about sensory perceptions differ for each sense organ. The laws characterizing the connections between physical contacts and sensory perceptions – such as the claim that light of a certain wavelength causes the perception “blue” – are the laws of the basic sensory “powers.” As in the case of all natural predispositions, the origins of these laws themselves are not explained, or at best are explained teleologically. But the specific content of the laws – that the perception “blue” is caused by a particular wavelength of light, and what that wavelength is – is determined empirically, and the presence of particular sensory perceptions is explained causally in terms of the laws governing the relevant power/sense organ.
In addition to the senses, the lower cognitive faculty includes the imagination.[28] Again, the goal of Kant’s empirical account is to trace the origin of particular cognitions – say the memory of a delicious meal or the imagining of a unicorn – to their occasioning causes and to discern the general laws that govern the cognitive powers (memory or fictive imagination) on the basis of which a particular occasioning cause brings about a particular subsequent cognitive state. When it comes to laying out the particular laws that govern the imagination, Kant’s account is similar to that of the empiricists. Most imaginative cognitions depend upon sensory cognitions, and cannot go beyond what has been made available by the senses.[29] Even the “productive [produktive] [imagination] is nevertheless not creative [schöpferisch], because it does not have the power to bring forth a sensory representation that was never given to our sensory powers” (7:167-8) Moreover, Kant follows the empiricists in positing a “law of association of ideas” (28:674, see too 7:175-77, 182) as a fundamental law governing the relations between ideas of the imagination.[30] In a passage that could almost be taken straight from Hume, Kant explains how “empirical ideas that have often followed each other produce a mental habit such that, when one is produced, this causes the other to arise as well” (7:176, cf. Hume 1740: I.iii.vi.4 and I.iii.vii.6).[31] Thus for the imagination,
Cognition x à Cognition y
↑
Frequent experience of cognition y following cognition x à Mental Habit
↑
Imagination
(A natural predisposition)
Because of the nature of the imagination, past experiences can give rise to habits of associating ideas with one another, and in the presence of such a habit, a new experience of one idea will cause one to cognize its associated idea in imagination. Relative to the simple account of the senses, the account of the imagination has one extra layer – to explain the origin of a particular mental habit – but the overall result is the same: Kant traces a particular cognition to its occasioning causes in previous states and its ultimate ground in a natural predisposition.
Generally, the imagination effects transitions and connections between sensory cognitions, but sometimes the imagination effects a transition from a sensory cognition to a higher cognition through an association between sensory and rational cognitions. There are two kinds of such association: “symbols” [Symbole] and “characters” [Charaktere] (7: 191). The key difference between the two is the principle according to which they effect a transition from lower to higher cognitions. Symbols effect such a transition according to the principle of analogy: “Symbols are . . . means that understanding uses to give a concept meaning by exhibiting an object for it. But they are only indirect means, by reason of their analogy [Kant’s emphasis] with certain intuition to which the concept can be applied” (7: 191).[32] For example, the expression “We want to bury the hatchet” acts symbolically to mean “We want to make peace” (7: 191) because burying the hatchet is similar to making peace, in that both involve laying down the weapons of war.[33]
Characters effect the transition from a sensory cognition (such as an auditory sensation of a word) to a higher cognition (a concept) through the principle of “association,” that is, through habitual connection: “Characters . . . in themselves signify nothing, but . . . the character accompanies the concept merely as guardian (custos), in order to reproduce the concept when the occasion arises” (7:191).[34] The most important characters are words that refer to concepts: “All language is a signification of thought and, on the other hand, the best way of signifying thought is through language, the greatest instrument for understanding ourselves and others” (7:192). In an important lecture, Kant explains why language is so valuable for signifying concepts:
They [characters, distinguished from symbols] serve to bring forth other representations, as [it were] by means of an index . . .. For our cognitions as signs of the understanding, nothing is as fitting as words, because in themselves they do not signify anything else; thus the understanding can connect the relevant concept with it. (25: 536)
Precisely because they do not function as symbols that are analogous to concepts, words are well suited to be associated with any concepts whatsoever.
Thus for characters, the causal pathway is as follows (taking the word ‘substance’ as an example):
Auditory cognition “Substance” à Concept of Substance
↑
Previous experience of à Habitual connection
“Substance” (the heard word) ↑ between “Substance” (the heard word)
conjoined with the ↑ and ‘Substance’ (the concept)
thought of ‘Substance’ (the concept). . ↑
Imagination (natural predisposition)
Just as in the case of any other habitual connection, words are connected to the concepts to which they refer according to principles of the imagination.[35] As we will see in section 5, this habitual connection provides one important source of higher cognitions in Kant’s empirical account of cognition.
With respect to both the senses and the imagination, Kant’s basic account of the causal laws governing their operation covers the operation of normal or healthy senses and imagination. But Kant’s attention to the well-functioning senses and imagination is sparse relative to his treatment of various influences that can change – usually in ways that are unhealthy – the normal functioning of these faculties. Thus with respect to the senses, Kant devotes a section of his published Anthropology to “the inhibition, weakening, and total loss of the sense powers” through such causes as “drunkenness” and “fainting” (7:165). And with respect to the imagination, Kant discusses the ways in which “intoxicating food or drink” (7:169ff.) can influence the imagination, he lists some “faults of the imagination” (7:181), and he describes various standard ways in which the imagination can lead one astray. For instance,
When one reads or hears of the life and deeds of a man who is great by virtue of his talent . . ., one is generally misled in ascribing considerable stature to him in imagination . . .. Not only the peasant, but even someone fairly well acquainted with the ways of the world, feels strange when the hero, who appearance had been judged by the deeds sung of him, presents himself as a little fellow, and when the sensitive and gentle Hume presents himself as a square-built fellow. (7:173)
This focus on dysfunctions and disorders, and on ways of correcting them, is what one would expect from Kant’s “pragmatic” anthropology. But Kant’s approach is no less causal for this practical focus. In the end, Kant provides an account of causal laws according structured by first presenting the normal functioning faculties of sense and imagination and then discussing various ways of causally influencing these faculties for better or worse. As we will see in the next several sections, this general framework for explaining the causal structure of the lower faculties of cognition will apply to the higher faculties as well. Kant’s empirical account will lay out the normal functioning of a healthy higher cognitive faculty and then propose various problems that can arise with this healthy functioning, offering practical suggestions about how to improve higher cognitions.
5) Kant’s Empirical Account of
the Healthy Higher Faculty of Cognition
One might think that even if Kant can give a causal account of the lower faculty of cognition – the cognitive faculty that is supposed to be primarily “passive” or “receptive” – he will not be able to give a similar account for the “spontaneous” or “self-active” higher faculty (28:228, 29:880, 28:584). But although the accounts of the higher cognitive faculties are in some respects more complicated than those of the lower faculties, Kant does not think that higher cognitive faculties are any less natural, nor any less susceptible to explanation in terms of natural causes, than the lower faculties.
Kant identifies all the basic powers of the soul as natural predispositions (29:915), and “understanding and reason,” the characteristic powers of the higher cognitive faculty, are specifically identified in this way (25:1172). Even “pure concepts” can be traced to “predispositions in the human understanding” (A66, see too Sloan 2002:230), and the three sorts of practical reasoning – technical, pragmatic, and moral – are labeled “predispositions.” In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant even explicitly includes “powers . . . whose . . . use is not drawn from experience but rather derived a priori from principles,” along with “memory, imagination, and the like” among the “natural predispositions” that one has a duty to perfect (6:444-5). However reason and the understanding appear from within the context of epistemology and pure moral philosophy, when considered within the context of anthropology and empirical psychology, they are simply natural predispositions.
Like other natural predispositions, the higher cognitive powers are in a sense left unexplained.[36] Kant gives various teleological explanations for why human beings have these predispositions,[37] and he even offers some conjectures about the causal origins of specific aspects of human reasoning.[38] But Kant generally treats the higher cognitive faculty just like any other natural predisposition, as something which is itself left unexplained, a properly basic power (or set of powers). Just as in the case of other predispositions, however, Kant insist that there are characteristic laws that govern the connections between cognitions within the higher faculty of cognition (see A549/B577, A803/B831; 27:502-4). And in his lectures on logic, Kant claims that the rules of logic precisely describe the operation of the higher cognitive powers as such. As he explains, “No power in nature deviates in its actions from its laws or conditions, under which alone it can function; thus the understanding taken alone never errs” (24:84, see too 24: 93-4, 102-3, 720, 824).
Of course, Kant does recognize that human beings err, and he ascribes error to “subjective laws” (24:18) that will be specifically psychological (as opposed to properly logical). I turn to his account of the sources of error shortly. But first it is important to isolate the behavior of healthy higher cognitive powers and explain how these ought to operate (logic proper) and how they do in fact operate (empirical psychology) in the absence of corrupting factors. Kant compares the description of the unaffected power of the understanding in a complete account of cognition to the classification of the laws of motion, where one abstracts from the role of air resistance:
No force of nature can act contrary to its own laws if it acts alone. But just as bodies in empty space indeed fall in accordance with the laws of gravity or describe perfect parabolas but deviate from this rule on account of air resistance: so other activities of the soul, such as stimulus, imagination, etc., are connected with the judgments of the understanding, and one errs if one takes this mixed effect to be a judgment of the understanding. E.g., we have a propensity to compare concepts qua identitatem et diversitatem, which is mother-wit, but also a propensity to compare them positively or negatively, which is the understanding; the one action mixes with the other. The imagination combines formerly connected concepts; hence imitation as well. (R2244, 16:283-4)
Before discussing the sources of error – the cognitive equivalent of air resistance – Kant describes the ideal cases in which the understanding acts alone. That is, he gives the laws governing the understanding as such. Then he can make the picture more complicated by adding external factors.[39]
The laws governing the higher faculties of cognition include laws of concept formation – the transition from sensory cognitive states to concepts – and laws governing relationships between various “judgments” – including the formation of judgments and the transitions from one judgment or set of judgments to another. Concepts and judgments are higher cognitive states, the equivalent of perceptions for the lower cognitive states. Like his accounts of the senses and unlike his account of the imagination, Kant’s discussion of the laws governing the normal functioning of the higher faculties is very brief in his anthropology (both published and lectures) and lectures on empirical psychology. Unlike the senses, however, where one needs to look to biological accounts of sense organs for more detail about proper function, Kant provides details about the proper functioning of the higher faculties of cognition in his logic.
As in the case of the lower faculties, Kant’s causal account of the healthy understanding ascribes different laws to different specific powers of cognition. With respect to the understanding (in the narrow sense), Kant offers laws governing the formation of concepts and the inference from one judgment/cognition to another. Thus for the formation of concepts, Kant explains that there are three “logical actus of the understanding, through which concepts are generated . . .: 1. comparison . . ., 2. reflection . . ., [and] 3. abstraction” (9:95).[40] Kant gives the following example:
I see, e.g., a spruce, a willow, and a linden. By first comparing these objects with one another I note that they are different from one another in regard to the trunk, the branches, the leaves, etc.; but next I reflect on that which they have in common among themselves, trunk, branches, and leaves themselves, and I abstract from the quantity, the figure, etc. of these; and thus I acquire a concept of a tree. (Jasche Logic, 9:95; see too 24: 252-3, 753, 907)
This account of concept formation is not specifically designed as a causal account, but as a normative logical one. Kant’s point here is not an empirical generalization about how people in fact arrive at concepts, but about how one should acquire concepts. But the account also functions as Kant’s explanation of how a properly functioning understanding acquires new concepts. The progress of cognitions in the higher faculty moves from sensory perceptions of particulars to the formation of general concepts:
Visual perception of a spruce, a willow, and a linden à Concept of tree
↑
Understanding
(Comparison, Reflection, Abstraction)
This concept of a tree is, of course, an empirical concept, but the formation of a priori concepts occurs in a similar fashion. In the first Critique, Kant makes this point in a very general way, insisting that
There is no doubt whatever that all our cognition begins with experience. . . . As far as time is concerned . . . no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition begins. (B1, see too 29:951-2)
In his lectures on metaphysics, Kant reiterates the distinction between empirical causation and a priori justification, but now in order to emphasize a particular psychological point. Kant again emphasizes that “Even the concepts of the understanding, although . . . not drawn from the senses, do arise on the occasion of experience,” giving two examples that are particularly striking for those familiar with Kant’s first and second Critiques: “e.g., no one would have the concept of cause and effect if he had not perceived causes through experience. No human being would have the concept of virtue if he were always among utter rogues” (28:233). Kant here takes his two most famous a priori concepts – causation and virtue – and claims that, within empirical psychology, these concepts have empirical occasioning causes. But Kant goes on to clarify the sense in which, while the senses “do constitute to this extent the ground of all cognitions, . . . not all cognitions have their origin in them” (28:233).
In explaining the role of experience in bringing about a priori concepts, Kant seeks to preserve his philosophical commitment to a priori cognitions while denying the psychological claim that these cognitions are “innate.” He asks, “how do [a priori concepts] come into the understanding?” and insists that “One must not assume them as innate and inborn” (28:233). Instead, he proposes,
[C]oncepts have arisen through the understanding, according to its nature, on the occasion of experience; for on the occasion of experience and the senses the understanding forms concepts which are not from the senses but rather drawn from reflection on the senses . . .. Thus with respect to matter all arise from the senses; with respect to form from the understanding, but they are not inborn in the understanding, but rather come about through reflection on the occasion of experience. We practice this action of reflection as soon as we have impression of senses. (28:233)
In the case of empirical concepts, the form of the concepts is derived from the understanding, while the matter is derived from the particular experiences that prompt the formation of the concept. Thus the concept of “tree” is both caused by the perception (and subsequent comparison) of several trees and gets its content in part from this perception. By contrast, the concept “cause” has a purely formal content, and thus does not depend for its content upon any experience.[41] Nonetheless, the formation of this concept is brought about through perceptions, just as in the case of empirical concepts. The difference is that the perceptions merely trigger the formation of a priori concepts, “through the understanding, according to its nature,” while they are partly constitutive of the content of empirical concepts.[42] In terms of empirical psychology, all cognitions ultimately have sensory causes, but this does not mean that the contents of all cognitions are limited by the experiences that cause them, nor that they are justified by those experiences. Kant sums this up by saying that although sensory cognitions “are still a necessary condition <condition sine qua non>” for concepts of the understanding, “they are no principle of being <principium essendi>” for them.
Once someone has concepts, these concepts can be formed into judgments and judgments can be related to one another. For Kant, different higher cognitive powers – judgment, the understanding, and reason – have different principles governing the formation and connections among judgments. Kant lays out these principles in his logic as normative principles, but given that “the understanding [in the broad sense] taken alone never errs” (24:84), these normative rules also describe the healthily functioning powers of judgment, understanding (in the narrow sense), and reason. For each power, there are several different principles that can justify connections among judgments.
Kant’s account of principles that govern relations amongst judgments is rooted in his broadly Aristotelian account of logic. As he explains in one lecture on logic, “we have no one who has exceeded Aristotle or enlarged his pure logic (which is in itself fundamentally impossible) just as no mathematician has exceeded Euclid” (24: 700, but cf. 24: 796).[43] Kant considers syllogistic reasoning, including the familiar principles of modus ponens and modus tollens (see 9:130), in terms of principles of reason:
The universal principle on which the validity of all inference through reasons rests may be determinatively expressed in the following formula: What stands under the condition of a rule also stands under the rule itself . . . . To every inference of reason belong the following essential three parts:
1. a universal rule, . . .the major proposition . . .,
2. the proposition which subsumes a cognition under the condition of the universal rule, . . . the minor proposition . . .,
3. the . . . conclusion. (9: 120, see too 24: 93, 282-3, 771-3)
Thus, from the cognition of the universal rule that human beings are mortal and the cognition of the proposition that Caius is a human being, one comes to have the cognition that Caius is mortal.
The power of judgment operates according to the principles governing analogy[44] – “things . . . which . . . agree in much, also agree in what remains” – and induction – “what belongs to many things of a genus belongs to the remaining ones too” (9:133, see too 24: 772). And the power of the understanding, in addition to generating concepts, gives rise to judgments through “immediate inference” (9:114, see too 24: 89, 281-2, 769). Principles governing immediate inferences include principles such as that “The inference from the universal to the particular is valid” (9:116), so, for example, one can infer that some human beings are mortal from the judgment that all human beings are mortal.
The principles of the higher cognitive powers are logical principles, and thus they are primarily normative, that is, descriptions of how human being ought to think. But these normative principles also describe how healthy higher cognitive powers in fact operate, at least in the absence of interfering factors. In this ideal case, one can account for the origin of any judgment by appeal to prior cognitive states as well as higher cognitive powers that effect a transition from those prior cognitive states to the new one. Thus, for example, a judgment that “some human beings are mortal” can arise from the cognitive state that involves judging that all human beings are mortal or from the (quite different) cognitive state that judges that some human beings are animals and that animals are mortal. In the former case, the relevant basic power is the understanding; in the latter, it reason. In general,
Prior Judgment à Subsequent Judgment
↑
Higher Cognitive Power
(Governed by characteristic principles)
For example,
Thought that “All human beings are mortal” à Thought that “Some human beings are mortal”
↑
Understanding
(Principle that “inference from universal to particular is valid”)
Or, for another example,
Judgment that many crows are black[45] à Judgment that all crows are black
↑
Judgment
(Principle of induction)
The logical rules
for the formation of concepts and the rules of inference governing connections
between judgments describe the normal functioning of a healthy understanding
isolated from the influence of other powers of the human soul. But human beings, for Kant, are not limited
to learning through the powers of the understanding alone. In most cases, Kant is critical of concepts
that originate through the influence of lower powers of cognitions. The ways in which error arises through the
influence of these lower powers will be the subject of the next section. Before turning to the corrupting influence of
the lower powers, however, it is important to note one important positive way in which the lower powers
of cognition can affect the understanding: instruction. The
case of instruction is important not only because it provides an alternative proper
way for judgments to arise in the higher cognitive faculties, but also because
it provides resources for understanding how the lower faculties corrupt
cognition.
Kant explains, “Instruction can enrich natural understanding with many concepts and equip it with rules” (7:199, see too 7: 204, 224-5; 25:777, 1476). In his lectures on pedagogy, Kant discusses the “cultivation of the mind” (9: 469-77) and in particular the “cultivation of the higher faculties of cognition” (9: 476). For example, “the understanding may at first be cultivated . . . by quoting examples that prove the rules, or . . . by discovering rules for particular cases” (9: 476).
In his Anthropology, Kant explains in more detail how instruction is capable of giving rise to new concepts and new connections between concepts/judgments. This detail comes through Kant’s analyses of both the imagination and the sense of hearing, which Kant takes to be the paradigm sense organ for instruction. With respect to the imagination, Kant’s account of characters – arbitrary signs designating concepts – provides the backbone of a theory of instruction of the higher cognitive powers. As I showed in the last section, Kant allows for transitions from lower to higher cognitions through the power of the imagination by means of either habitual (associative) or analogical (symbolic) connections between signs and concepts. The power of language for communicating concepts makes possible the education of the higher faculties of cognition through instruction.[46] In instruction, the teacher uses words to guide the understanding of the pupil.
In all cases, instruction involves at least some level of imitation: “the mechanism of teaching always forces the pupil to imitate” (7: 225). But different sorts of instruction require imitation to different degrees. Kant distinguishes, for example, between acromatic method, where “someone only teaches,” and erotematic method, where the teacher “asks well” (9:149). The former involves pure imitation; the learner conforms her thoughts to the thoughts of the teacher. The latter, however, gives rise to judgments according to the learner’s own cognitive faculties, not merely in imitation. This approach has advantages because “[t]he best way to understand is to do. That which we learn most thoroughly, and remember the best, is what we have in a way taught ourselves” (9: 477). This erotematic method can be further distinguished into “dialogic or Socratic method,” where “the questions are directed to the understanding” and “catechistic method,” where “questions are directed . . . merely to memory” (9:149, see too 6: 477f.; 24:780). Catechism is different from mere acromatic teaching, because the teaching invokes the memory of the learner herself. Unlike Socratic method, however, this catechesis invokes a lower cognitive faculty (memory, a sort of imagination), rather than a higher faculty. Only Socratic method allows for teaching that teaches through the power of the understanding.[47]
All of these forms of instruction, however, depend upon the imagination at least to communicate the teacher’s thoughts – whether questions or judgments – to the learner through words. In the case of the acromatic method, these words give rise to judgments in the mind of learner directly, through mere imitation: Judgment that “E=mc2” in mind of teacher à Spoken (and then heard) phrase “E=mc2” à Judgment that “E=mc2” in mind of learner. For catechesis, the words give rise to judgments through imitation (of the question) followed by memories triggered by this question: Judgment that “E=mc2” in mind of teacher à Thought (in mind of teacher) of the question “What formula expresses the relationship between matter and energy?” à Spoken (and then heard) phrase “What formula expresses the relationship between matter and energy?” à Thought (in mind of learner) of the question “What formula expresses the relationship between matter and energy?” à Judgment that “E=mc2” in mind of learner. In the case of Socratic instruction, imitative thinking of the question (through imagination) stimulates reflection by the understanding, which gives rise to new thoughts. For an example taken from Kant’s “moral catechism” (6:480)[48]: the judgment (in the mind of the teacher) that “one ought not lie” à the thought (in the mind of the teacher) of the question “Suppose . . . that a situation arises in which you could get a great benefit for yourself . . . by making up a subtle lie . . .: What does your reason say about it?” (6: 481) à words spoken by the teacher and heard by the learner à thought of this question in the mind of the learner à consideration of the situation described in the question à judgment “that I ought not to lie, no matter how great the benefits” (6: 481). In all three cases, the connection between the words spoken by the teacher and the immediate thought in the mind of the learner is grounded in the nature of hearing, a mental habit linking words to concepts, and ultimately in the principle of association, a principle of the imagination. In the eretomatic cases, however, this thought is not the final product of instruction. In order to get to the ultimate judgment that the pupil is to learn, the thought caused immediately by the words must give rise to further thoughts, and the connections with these further thoughts is grounded in either memory (for catechesis) or the understanding (for Socratic instruction). All instruction, then, even when it invokes higher cognitive powers, depends at least in part on the principle of association of the imagination.[49]
6) Ordinary Deviations from Healthy Functioning
in the Higher Cognitive Powers
As
noted in the last section, the connection between normative logical principles
and empirical psychological rules is a very close one for Kant. But Kant recognizes that human beings err,
and he even insists upon the importance of distinguishing
the way that people actually do think “under various subjective obstacles
and restrictions” (
This practice of giving a normative account supplemented by various disorders is consistent with Kant’s practice throughout his anthropology, including his treatment of the lower cognitive faculty (see section 4) and even the faculties of feeling and desire.[51] As Kant explains, we should “make some observations about human beings, how one differs from another in these mental endowments or in their habitual use or misuse, first in a healthy soul, and then also in mental illness” (7:197). Kant’s account of the variations from normative functioning of the higher faculties in his lectures on logic focus on errors that arise in a generally healthy understanding; in the Anthropology, he focuses on the more extreme cases, including mental illness. I discuss ordinary bases for error in this section, and more extreme cases in the next.
In his lectures on logic, Kant traces errors in otherwise healthy understandings to faulty principles, called “prejudices,” connecting cognitions, and he details various causal accounts of the origins of these prejudices. Just as the powers of judgment, the understanding, and reason systematically effect transitions from one cognitive state (a judgment) to another according to specific principles, so too prejudices effect transitions from one cognitive state to another according to principles. And just as the principles governing the powers of the higher cognitive faculties function both as normative rules of inference and as descriptive laws of the causal operation of these higher powers, so prejudices function both normatively (in a negative sense) as accounts of various fallacies and psychologically as descriptions of how a corrupted understanding actually operates.
There are three important aspects of Kant’s account of prejudices. First, Kant explains the basic nature of prejudices, in particular distinguishing prejudices from mere false or unsupported beliefs. This helps show that prejudices are in part explanatory principles rather than mere cognitive states requiring explanation. In that sense, they are like the laws governing cognitive powers. Second, Kant sketches various prejudices, showing how they give rise to various fallacious or poorly supported judgments. Like the first part of Kant’s analysis, this part is much like his account of the specific principles governing the higher cognitive powers. But finally, Kant offers causal accounts of the origin of the prejudices themselves. In this respect, prejudices are unlike the basic principles governing the higher cognitive powers. Prejudices are not natural predispositions in human nature, but must themselves originate from the effect of other occasional causes in the context of other human predispositions.
The nature and variety of prejudices. Throughout his lectures on logic, Kant is careful to distinguish prejudices from mere false judgments. Prejudices, in general, are “provisional judgments . . . accepted as principles” (9:75), and they affect the way in which other cognitions arise. As he explains,
A cognition that is accepted merely by means of a prejudice is not at all a prejudice itself; if we want to speak properly, . . . there are actually only a few prejudices, but . . . infinitely many errors arising from these existing prejudices (24: 167)
Prejudice is the mechanization of reason in principles. A prejudice is a principium for judging based on subjective causes that are regarded as objective . . . . (24: 863)
Prejudices . . . serve, as it were, in place of principles, because prejudices must be principles. (24: 865)
In terms of Kant’s empirical account of cognition, prejudices function in the first place not as erroneous judgments – which might be the consequence of other mental states – but as principles according to which one makes erroneous inferences. That is,
Cognition X à Cognition Y
↑
Prejudice
For example, “the prejudice of the prestige of the age” leads us to favor the writers of antiquity more than we should, thereby “elevating the relative worth of their writings to an absolute worth” (9:79). This prejudice leads people to adopt principles that they otherwise would not adopt, simply because they read of those principles in the ancients.
Belief that Aristotle says, “X” à Belief that X
↑
Prejudice of the prestige of the age
A substantial portion of Kant’s lectures on logic, especially his early lectures, is spent describing the role that various prejudices play in giving rise to false beliefs. Kant’s catalog of prejudices[52] includes such prejudices as the prejudices of excessive trust and mistrust (24: 174), prejudices of prestige (such as the prestige of the multitude or the prestige of the ancients, see 24: 178, 871), and “logical egoism,” the prejudice according to which “one believes . . . that one simply does not need the help of the judgment of others in a judgment of the understanding” (24: 179, see too 7: 128-9; 24: 151, 178-9, 740, 870, 873-4). A complete catalog of these prejudices would be necessary to make Kant’s empirical account of human action exhaustive, and Kant does go a considerable way towards giving such a complete catalog. For the purposes of this paper, however, what is most significant is simply that Kant details various prejudices, and how he explains their operation as principles underlying connections between judgments rather than as mere erroneous judgments.
The Causes of Prejudices. Like the rules governing the healthy understanding, prejudices function as principles governing regular connections – one might even say inferences – between judgments. But unlike the principles of the understanding, judgment, and reason, prejudices cannot be ascribed to natural predispositions in human nature. In this respect, prejudices are like inclinations within Kant’s account of human desire.[53] As Patrick Frierson explains regarding inclinations, “inclinations are not themselves natural predispositions, and thus Kant’s causal story cannot end with [them]. Inclinations are acquired, so for Kant’s account to be complete, he needs to explain the causal origin of the inclination itself” (Frierson 2005: 21). Similarly, because prejudices are not natural predispositions, Kant’s empirical account of cognition needs to explain the origin of prejudices.
Fortunately, Kant’s catalog of prejudices also includes extensive details regarding the “causes [Ursache] by which . . . prejudice . . . is created and sustained” (9:79, emphasis in original). Kant gives a general account of prejudices, a description of the three “principal causes of prejudices,” and specific causal accounts of each distinct prejudice. Kant’s general account of prejudice locates their origin in the lower cognitive faculty (and to some degree in the lower faculty of desire). As Kant explains, “All errors rest on the fact that sensibility influences the understanding. When one believes that one has this through understanding, and sensibility has a secret influence on the matters, then errors arise” (24: 863). The general idea is that in some cases, a judgment (a higher cognition) comes about as the result of processes grounded in a lower faculty (of cognition or desire). We have already seen how this can work in the context of Kant’s discussion of instruction in section five. But error can arise when one fails to reflect on one’s judgments, and so one does not recognize that the source of the judgment is not the higher powers of cognition but sensibility. In a helpful passage from a lecture on logic given in the early 1780’s, Kant explains the general nature of prejudice, highlighting (with examples) how both lower cognitive faculties and lower faculties of desire can give rise to prejudice:
Prejudice is a principium for judging, not from objective grounds, but . . . [from] subjective ones. With grounds, I think only of something universal, and with subjective causes a certain condition operates in man. E.g., it is a custom to have a superstitious respect for someone, namely, because this man has always been such in earlier times; thus there arises from this a principle for judging . . . which has become our own through frequent exercise. From this is becomes clear how a principium arises out of subjective causes. – One judges the maxims of others critically, and holds his own to be good. Here is the prejudice suum cuique pulchrum, whose subjective cause is self-love . . . . The principle sources of prejudices are subjective causes, accordingly, which are falsely held to be objective grounds. (24:864-5)
For both cases, one’s cognitive faculties are governed by a principle – “trust such-and-such a person” or “give more weight to one’s own opinions than those of others” – that is not an objective principle of the higher cognitive faculties. In the first case, the ground of connections between the judgment that “such-and-such says X” to “X” is a principle of “superstitious respect,” ultimately grounded in the imagination:
Person P says X à X
↑
Previous experience of P’s correctness à Superstitious respect (i.e., a habit of trusting P)
↑
Imagination (principle of association)
In the second case, the ground of connections between judgments is a principle that cuts short reflection on the opinions of both oneself and others, but in such a way that one unreflectively trusts one’s own judgments and unreflectively doubts those of others. This principle is ultimately grounded in a principle of the faculty of desire, the principle of self-love, mistakenly influencing the higher cognitive faculty.
In addition to laying out the general claim that errors due to prejudice arise from the influence of sensibility on the understanding, Kant outlines three “principle sources [Hauptquellen] of prejudices . . .: imitation, custom, and inclination” (9:76, see too 24:165-6, 865). The last paragraph has already offered examples of the role of custom (a habit of trusting someone) and inclination in general (the role of self-love). Kant also gives examples of the role that specific inclinations can play in generating prejudice, focusing especially on the role of “the laziness of men” (24:866).[54] This laziness also contributes to the third source of prejudice, imitation, since “the laziness of men makes them prefer to proceed passively, rather than raising their power of cognition so far as to make use of their own powers. Accordingly, they . . . merely imitate” (24: 866, see too 9: 76).
Finally, Kant goes beyond descriptions of the causes of prejudice in general to offer insightful analyses of the causal bases of specific prejudices. For example (an example to which many Kant scholars ought pay particular attention!), Kant explains the causal origins of the “prejudice in favor of the ancients” (24:876, see too 9: 80, 24: 739), rivaling Nietzsche in psychological richness and diverse causal accounts this prejudices. Kant explains how “prejudices often arise from opposed causes” (24:876), so that one’s natural underestimation of the ancients leads one to surprise at what they accomplished, and this “often turns to admiration” (9:80). Moreover, “all the cognitions that we have of antiquity are themselves, for us, learnedness” (24:876), so we prejudicially associate the teachings of the ancients with learnedness. Again, “another cause for judging in favor of the ancients is gratitude” (24: 878) or “thankfulnesss” (9: 79). Yet another is “envy toward our contemporaries” since “he who cannot contend with the moderns extols the ancients at their expense” (9:79). And laziness again makes its stand, since “one who is not acquainted with the new, [and] does not want to be acquainted with it, due to laziness” can simply focus attention on the ancients (24: 739, see too 9: 76).
Kant gives similar psychological explanations of the origins of other prejudices, and in the end, despite his claims about the difference between logic and empirical psychology, Kant’s logic offers extensive empirical-causal explanations of factors that play a role in bringing the understanding to operate in non-normative ways. These factors are categorized as prejudices, which both ground non-normative connections between cognitive states and are themselves the results of empirical influence on human cognition. In the end, Kant’s account of ordinary human cognition allows for transitions between judgments that are grounded either in principles of the understanding (including judgment and reason) or in prejudices. When grounded in principles of the understanding, Kant’s empirical account has reached its terminus in a natural predisposition. When grounded in prejudices, Kant in turn offers causal explanations of the relevant prejudice. Kant’s complete account of the ordinary higher faculties can be outlined (somewhat simplified) as follows (where an asterisk marks a natural predisposition that requires no further explanation in terms of antecedent causes):
Cognition A à Cognition B
↑
Principles of Understanding, Judgment, or Reason*
Or
Prior experience à Prejudice
↑
Imagination* (i.e. imitation or custom)
And[55]/or Inclination[56] (via deliberate shifting of attention)
The initial Cognition A can be either sensory or a higher cognition, and the past experience that gives rise to a prejudice can be either past experiences of the constant conjunction of concepts (for custom), or the experience – mediated through signs – of connections in another person’s understanding (for imitation). In the end, one traces the empirical causes of Cognition B to either antecedent experiences, which act as occasional causes, or natural human predispositions, which are underlying substantial causes.
8. Extraordinary Sources of Error: Mental
illnesses.
The account of cognition in the last two sections accounts for the origin of all cognitions – whether proper or not – in ordinary human beings. But especially in his Anthropology, Kant turns to more serious problems, relatively[57] uncommon “weaknesses and illnesses [Schwächen und Krankheiten]” affecting cognitive powers. This focus, which allows Kant to present colorful examples of mental weakness and disorder that his students could “compare with their . . . experience” (Kant’s letter to Herz, 10: 146), fits with the popular approach of Kant’s anthropology, wherein he seeks to present “phenomena and their laws” in a way that is “entertaining and never dry” (Kant’s letter to Herz, 10: 146). But the taxonomy of different sorts of mental disorders (and the companion discussion of various mental “talents”) also brings Kant’s discussion of the higher cognitive faculties in line with his more general anthropological approach, where he emphasizes natural endowments and a quasi-biological classification of different types of people. This classificatory aspect of Kant’s empirical account of cognition represents his concession that the logical laws of the understanding and even the prejudices that typically lead people astray fail to capture all of the possibilities for human cognition. Without compromising his overall approach, Kant can admit exceptions to this typical human cognitive framework by classifying and explaining the nature of those exceptions.
In keeping with his anthropology generally, Kant’s approach to these disorders is more taxonomic that strictly causal. He distinguishes mental deficiency, where someone’s reason simply “has not enough control over itself to direct” thoughts, from mental illness, wherein someone’s “stream of thoughts follows its own (subjective) rule, which is contrary to that (objective) [rule] that conforms to the laws of experience” (7:202). Mental deficiencies include being dull, simple, or silly, lacking judgment, and distraction. The differences between these deficiencies depend on which cognitive faculty is affected (reason, the understanding, or the power of judgment) and in what ways that faculty fails to function properly. For example, someone who is “dull” (7:204) lacks intelligence, the “faculty for discovering the universal for the particular” (7:201); such a person – at least in extreme cases – cannot effectively acquire concepts for him or herself through the process of comparison, reflection, and abstraction.[58] Such a person can still be taught, however. So, for example, “Clavius, whose schoolmaster wanted to apprentice him to be a blacksmith because he could not make verses [showing that he was dull] . . . . became a great mathematician as soon as he got hold of a book of mathematics” (7:204). Some mental deficiencies are present in us by nature and are incurable; Kant seems to this that this is true of one who is “dull.” Others, however, such as “distraction,” can be prevented (7:208) or even cultivated for good purposes (7:207).
Mental deficiencies do not fundamentally change Kant’s empirical account of human cognition. The account, as developed in the last two sections, involves several different powers working to bring about mental states from prior mental states. Mental deficiencies neither add to this account nor change the operation of any of the powers or principles. They simply involve the suspension of certain powers. In an ordinary person, one expects certain mental states – say, the observation of a spruce, a willow, and a linden – to give rise to particular further mental states – the concept of a tree. But if one knows that a particular person is “dull,” one will modify one’s empirical account accordingly. Without the capacity for finding the universal in the particular, such a dull person will fail to make the proper comparisons between the three trees until taught, and thus the observation will give rise to no higher (empirical) concept. In this respect, mental deficiencies are like any other deficiency. The loss of a particular sense, for example, does not in itself change the operation of the other senses, and modifying one’s empirical account to reflect the absence of a higher power of cognition is no more difficult than modifying it to reflect the absence of a sense.[59]
Just as he does with mental weaknesses, Kant offers a taxonomic approach to mental illnesses, but mental illnesses are much more serious deviations from the ordinary operation of one’s cognitive faculties. Unlike deficiencies, which involve the loss or weakening of a power, one with mental illness thinks according to principles that are wholly different from those of healthy cognitive faculties, principles that cannot be explained (as prejudices can) by appeal to the normal operation of other human faculties (cognitive or otherwise). What is more, in many cases these disorders “originate from Nature” (7:214), making them akin to disordered natural predispositions.
In his taxonomy of mental illness, Kant distinguishes “melancholia (hypochondria)” and “mania.” The former is the less extreme of the two. Melancholia “can cause an illness because human nature, by virtue of a peculiar quality lacking in animals, can strengthen or sustain a feeling by centering attention on certain local impressions” (7: 212). One focuses on certain sensations and conjures up imagined illnesses, which can eventually dominate one’s life, making one “unable to come to grips with his imaginings” (7: 212).
With respect to mania, Kant pessimistically claims, “It is difficult to bring systematic classification to what is essential and incurable disorder” (7:214). Mania covers such a wide variety of divergent and irregular mental illnesses that Kant despairs of providing an exhaustive catalog of them. Moreover, in the context of his pragmatic anthropology in particular, “it is of little use to occupy oneself with [mania] because all methods of cure must be fruitless . . .. Still, anthropology requires at least an attempt at a general outline of this most profound degradation of humanity which seems to originate from Nature” (7:214). In this context, Kant distinguishes between several different kinds of “derangement,” focusing on broad classifications rather than specific varieties of each:[60]
1. Madness [Unsinnigkeit; amentia[61]] is the inability to bring ideas into mere coherence necessary for the possibility of experience . . ..
2. Dementia [Wahnsinn; dementia] is that disturbance of mind wherein everything which the insane person relates is in accord with the possibility of experience, and indeed with the formal laws of thought; but because of falsely inventive imagination, self-concocted representations are treated as if they were perceptions . . ..
3. Insanity [Wahnwitz; insania] is disordered faculty of judgment in which the mind is deceived by analogies, which are being confused with concepts of similar things . . ..
4. Lunacy [Aberwitz; vesania] is the sickness of a disordered reason. The patient disregards all the facts of experience and aspires to principles which can be entirely exempted from the test of experience . . .. This fourth kind of madness could be called systematic. For in this last kind of mental derangement there is not merely lack of order and deviation from the rule for the use of reason, but also positive unreason; that is, another rule is present. (7: 214-6)
In each case, the relevant power of cognition – understanding for the first, the imagination for the second, judgment for the third, and reason for the last – fails to operate according its normal rules of operation, operating either in “essential disorder,” according to causes that cannot be easily subsumed under rules, or according to “another” rule that that which is normative for the respect faculty, as in the case of “positive unreason.”
For a complete causal account of the higher cognitive faculties, Kant should give causal accounts of the origins of these mental illnesses, or should show that they are natural predispositions in those who have them. With respect to mania, or derangement, Kant focuses on biological bases, arguing that “the germ [Keime] of derangement develops together with the germ of reproduction, and is thus hereditary” (7:217; see too Munzel 1999, Sloan 2002). Kant specifically argues against alternative explanations of this phenomenon such as “He became crazy from love,” “He went mad from pride;” [or] “He studied too hard.” (7:217-8). He posits that derangement simply sets on at a particular time due to biological factors, although the “definite object” that becomes “the subject matter about which the person will rave” is based on an “accidental encounter;” this object is simply “what first comes into the mind at the (usually sudden) outbreak of a crazy disposition” (7: 218). With respect to other mental disorders, Kant gives more detail about contingent causal factors relevant to their genesis. He claims, for example, that “the reading of novels” can “cause many . . . mental discords” and “has the consequence that it makes distraction habitual” (7:208, see too 7:185). In the end, however, Kant does not offer the same sort of systematic account of the origin of mental illness that one finds, for instance, in his discussions of prejudice.
The failure to give sufficient details about the biological and contextual causes of various mental disorders is a limitation to Kant’s empirical account of human action. But this limitation is understandable in a philosopher whose primary focus was on normative rather than psychological issues, especially in a context (mania) where Kant is pessimistic about the practical usefulness of causal accounts of the origins of these disorders. The scarcity of detail here hardly compromises Kant’s overall commitment to causal necessity in human action, even if it leaves a lot of fleshing out for future anthropologists and empirical psychologists.
9)
Conclusion
With respect to human cognition, Kant is best known – and rightly so – for his transcendental logic and transcendental psychology. But Kant also offered an empirical-psychological account of human cognition, an account of the specific empirical character of all human cognitions, from sensory perceptions to Ideas of reason. According to this account, the human faculty of cognition involves several distinct powers, natural predispositions in human nature that operate according to characteristic laws. The senses and imagination constitute a “lower” faculty of cognition, governed by the laws connecting physical interactions with perceptions (for the senses) and by various laws of association (for the imagination). The understanding in the broad sense (including powers of judgment, understanding, and reason) constitutes a “higher” faculty of cognition. In itself, this higher faculty is governed by various logical laws – ranging from laws for the formation of concepts to laws of induction to basic logical rules of inference. But this higher faculty also interacts with the lower faculties of cognition (especially the imagination) and desire (inclinations). These interactions give rise to the potential for instruction but also to dangerous prejudices that make improper judgments possible. Finally, human nature is susceptible to variations, such that some people lack one or another cognitive power and others have powers that operate by principles different from the logical principles of healthy human cognition.
Kant, then, has a detailed empirical account of human cognition. This account differs in important ways both from rationalist predecessors such as Wolff and from empiricist accounts such as Hume’s. In contrast to Wolff, for example, Kant refuses to distinguish higher and lower faculties according to the clarity and distinctness of representations, insisting instead that higher and lower cognitive powers are fundamental natural predispositions, irreducible to a more basic power. And for just one important difference from the Hume, while Hume locates habits of the imagination as the source of humans’ most important concepts (causation, substance, etc.), Kant locates precisely such habits as the prime source of those prejudices that undermine the proper formation and use (by the understanding) of concepts such as causation and substance.
As
interesting as Kant’s empirical account of cognition is in its own right, however,
Kant does not offer this account simply as a theoretical alternative in
psychology. In both his logic and his
anthropology, Kant’s reflections on the way that human cognition actually –
that is, empirically – works are reflections with a practical purpose. As
Kant explains, “the purpose of the doctrine of reason . . . is the improvement
of . . . cognition” (24:29, see too
[1] Similarly in his lectures on
metaphysics, Kant explains that “with human beings all representations commence
with objects of experience,” such that “in order to obtain cognitions, even
concepts of the understanding, our faculty of cognition must be awakened by objects
of experience” (29:951). But he again
quickly points out that there are nonetheless “a priori concepts . . . that
cannot be derived from experience” (29:952, emphasis added).
[2] Whether Kant’s transcendental
philosophy requires a causal-empirical account of cognition depends upon
whether one takes the argument of the second analogy to be both essential to
Kant’s transcendental idealism and to apply to inner experience, as well as how
central of a place in his transcendental philosophy one gives Kant’s formulation
of and resolution to the Third Antinomy.
[3] One additional reason is that in the
absence of any actual empirical account of the origin of cognition, Kant’s
insistence on the epistemological claim that many cognitions are a priori has
been conflated with the claim that these cognitions are “innate,” a claim that
has itself been poorly understood. This
conflation is not common among Kant scholars, but it is a popular misconception
among psychologists and some philosophers that is facilitated by the lack of
clear account of Kant’s views about empirical psychology.
[4] This paper was written before my
exposure to Rauscher’s arguments for reason as a natural cause. While our overall approaches differ
(primarily in that unlike Rauscher, I am not trying to develop a “naturalistic
interpretation of the metaphysics of transcendentally free reason” (Rauscher
2006: 1), our accounts overlap in seeing Kant’s philosophy as having space for
an empirical account of human reason.
[5] Admittedly, insofar as Kant argues
that the influence of the imagination on the understanding is bad or unhealthy
or likely to lead to error, he goes beyond empirical psychology proper, since
these are normative rather than merely descriptive claims.
[6] There Kant says,
The empirical doctrine of the soul must always remain even further removed than chemistry from the rank of what may be called a natural science proper . . .. It can . . . never become anything more than a historical (and as such, as much as possible) systematic natural doctrine of the internal sense, i.e., a natural description of the soul, but not a science of the soul, nor even a psychological experimental doctrine. This is the reason why . . . the general name of natural science . . . belongs to the doctrine of body alone. (4:471, see too 28:679)
Many (e.g. Gouax 1972) have taken this passage to imply that Kant opposes any kind of serious empirical study of the causal principles underlying mental life, and some have gone as far as to use this to argue against causal necessity in human actions. But Kant’s argument against psychology as a science employs very specific objections to psychology as a science, and Kant allows that psychology can be a “historical systematic natural doctrine of the inner sense” (4:471) and even a “natural science . . . improperly so called, . . . [which] would treat its object . . . according to laws of experience” (4:468). As Hatfield (1990, 1992), Sturm (2001), and others argue, Kant objects to applying to psychology a very particular conception of science, as a study “whose certainty is apodictic,” which must thus consist in “a priori principles” (4:468) and in particular in the application of “mathematics” to its subject matter (4:470). Hatfield rightly points out, that “Kant’s basic position [is] that the phenomena of empirical psychology are strictly bound by the law of cause just as are the phenomena of physics. (Hatfield 1992: 217)
[7] Ameriks and Narragon add, “Of
course, for any particular passage in the notes, it is not certain that what
Kant said was transcribed correctly” (xiv); as much as possible, I seek to
confirm claims based on Kant lectures notes with multiple citations so that I
do not rely too heavily on any one set of lecture notes.
[8] In the introduction to his published Anthropology, Kant explains this difference between speculative theorizing and pragmatic anthropology:
If we ponder natural causes – for example, the possible natural causes behind the power of memory – we can speculate to and fro (as Descartes did) about traces, remaining in the brain, of impressions left by sensation we have experience. But since we do not know the cerebral nerves and fibers or understand how to use them for our purposes, we still have to admit that we are mere spectators at this play of our ideas and let nature have its way. So theoretical speculation on the subject is a sheer waste of time. – But when we use our observations about what has been found to hinder or stimulate memory in order to increase its scope or efficiency, and need knowledge of man for this purpose, this is part of anthropology for pragmatic purposes; and that is precisely what concerns us here. (7:119)
For Kant, both pragmatic anthropology and theoretical
speculation lay out various natural causes of mental faculties. The difference is that pragmatic anthropology
focuses on causes that it can use to improve those faculties.
[9] Kant explains the difference between popular and systematic presentations of a science in his lectures on logic:
Scientific or scholastic method differs from popular method through the fact that the former proceeds from basic and elementary propositions, but the latter from the customary and interesting. The former aims for thoroughness and thus removes everything foreign, the latter aim at entertainment. (9:148)
Or, as he put it elsewhere, anthropology can “be read by
everyone, even by women getting dressed [Dame bey der Toilette]” (25: 856-7,[9]
see too 25: 1213).
[10] For details about the reliability of
Jaesche’s text, see Young 1992: xvi-xviii.
[11] Hatfield (1990: 73) shows how Kant
is here opposing the Wolffian reliance on empirical psychology as a source from
which logical principles can be “borrowed” (cf. Wolff’s Psychologica
empirica, Prolegomena, §§ 4, 5, and 9).
Kant, by contrast, studies logic on its own terms, but then uses the
insights of logic as a guide to his empirical psychology. Like Wolff, however, Kant maintains a
connection between logic and psychology.
The difference between the two is that Wolff starts with empirical
psychology and uses its principles in his logic. Kant starts with logic but makes use of
logical principles for developing his empirical account of cognition. In this sense, Kant’s approach to the
relation between empirical psychology and logic is the opposite of Wolff’s.
[12]
In at least one Reflexion from the 1760s, Kant goes even further, claiming that
while “[l]ogic . . . has clear principia
a priori and not empirical principles, thus it borrows nothing from
psychology,” nonetheless “[i]t is abstracted
from the empirical use of the
understanding, but not derived from
it” (R 1612,
[13] A detailed study of empiricist
approaches to the “higher” faculties of cognition would be well worth studying,
both for its own sake and for comparison with Kant, but such a study is beyond
the scope of the present essay. One
might also usefully compare Kant with Wolff here (see Hatfield 1990: 72-5).
[14] I do not mean to imply that Kant is
a thoroughgoing determinist. But it is
Kant’s transcendental idealism, according to which empirical determinism is not
all there is to be said about human cognition, that makes Kant less determinist
than Hume. Unlike Hume, Kant does not
think that the ultimate ground of
human actions can be identified with the empirical causes of these actions.
[15] There is a good reason for the greater
sophistication in Kant’s account of the higher faculty of cognition. Hume thinks that most belief is the result of
principles of the imagination, so his psychology focuses on the nature of that
cognitive power. Kant’s recognition of
the possibility of prejudices and disorders as problems with the understanding
itself helps support his expanded account of the role of the understanding, and
his sense of this expanded role makes him more interested in and attuned to
problems specific to the understanding.
[16] See e.g. 7:196, where Kant explains
the differences between these faculties, and related sections of lectures in
empirical psychology (28:73-5, 242-3, 863-5; 29: 888-90) and anthropology (25:
537, 773-4, 1032f., 1296, 1476). Kant’s
placement of the power of judgment (Urteilskraft) in the higher
cognitive faculty is a notable departure from Baumgarten, who places it in the
lower cognitive faculty (see Metaphysica §§ 606-9). A detailed comparison of Baumgarten and Kant
on the nature of judgment would reward further study but is beyond the scope of
the present paper.
[17] Kant explains that he groups the
essentially distinct powers into three classes “in order to treat empirical
psychology all the more systematically” (28:262).
[18] I have amended the Cambridge Edition
translation, translating Geist as “mind” where they translate it as
“spirit.”
[19] A natural predisposition
“indicate[s] what can be made of a man” by nature, as opposed to “what man is
prepared to make of himself” (7:285).
The concept is closely related, for Kant, to the notion of a “germ” (Keime). For more on Kant’s account of Anlagen,
as well as the relationship between Anlagen and Keime, see Munzel
1999 and Sloan 2002.
[20] Kant does argue that these
predispositions can be explained by reference to final causes, that is, in
terms of the ends that they promote. As
a “heuristic principle for researching the particular laws of nature” (5:411),
one can add to the principle of efficient causation a “principle of final
causes” (5:387) “in order to supplement the inadequacy of [explanation in terms
of efficient causes] in the empirical search for particular laws of nature”
(5:383). According this heuristic
principle, “nothing in [an organized product of nature] is in vain,
purposeless, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature” (5:376). By relegating these teleological-biological
explanations to the status of a heuristic, a “maxim of the reflecting power of
judgment” (5:398) that “is merely subjectively valid” (5:390), Kant is free to
explain natural predispositions in terms of purposive structures without
compromising his overall commitment to the fundamental principle that every
event in the world in fact has efficient causes.
For more
detailed analyses of the nature of predispositions, and the sorts of
(teleological) explanations of them that Kant does provide, see Sloan 2002 and
Frierson 2005.
[21] As Eric Watkins has rightly pointed
out, Kant often uses the terms cause and effect in a way that is quite
different from Hume (and other empiricists).
Often for Kant, a cause just is an underlying power of a
substance, and the effect of this power is a change of state of a substance
(either the substance with the power or another one, or both). Thus Watkins emphasizes that “what Kant takes
to be an effect, namely a continuous change from one determinate state to
another, is not what Hume understands an effect to be, namely a determinate
state of an object at a particular moment in time . . .. Nor is the cause for Kant – a phenomenal
substance – identical to the cause for Hume – a determinate state at a
particular moment in time” (Watkins 2005: 384).
As Watkins points out, the law-likeness of changes, for Kant, is due to
the fact that these changes are the effects of powers in substances that are
themselves unchanging because they are due to the nature of the substance. Nonetheless, these powers give rise to
different effects in different circumstances.
As Watkins emphasizes,
What changes is not the exercise of
the forces themselves, but rather the effects the exercise of forces
will have. That is, a given substance
acts in the same way at all times, but this activity can nonetheless cause
different things to happen because the circumstances of the substance can be different. (Watkins 2005: 270, see too 267, 354, 411-12)
Given the role of “external circumstances that must obtain
for this cause to be efficacious” (411), one can reasonably bring together
Kant’s use of the term “cause” for causal powers and our more common sense (and
admittedly empiricist) notion of cause as a preceding event. This strategy is confirmed by Kant’s
occasional use of the term “cause” to refer to prior states of the world rather
than substances (A543/B571, see too 28:254, 674-5; 29:895).
[22] “Ultimate” for the purposes of human
reason. Kant entertains the possibility
that “there must be a primitive power from which all others come” but insists
that “we cannot reduce all powers to
one, because the accidents are so different that we cannot take them as the
same” (29:770, emphasis added; cf. 28:210, 262; 29:935).
[23] That said, I do not always use the
vertical arrow for substantial causes in the strict sense. Rather, the vertical arrow reflects the
underlying explanation for why a particular occasioning cause gives rise to a
particular effect. In many cases (such
as properly functioning senses), this underlying explanation is a natural
predisposition, and thus a substantial cause.
But in other cases, such as acquired habits of the imagination, the
underlying explanation is acquired, and hence not strictly due to the nature of
the human being. Ultimately, of course,
underlying explanations must be traced back to natural predispositions, but the
immediate ground of a connection
between two mental states may be an acquired, rather than strictly natural,
character.
[24] Kant says so little about the five
senses that there is not much of an exhaustive Kantian account to be given
here. With respect to inner sense and
especially the imagination, a more exhaustive account would reward further
exploration, but including it would make the present paper too unwieldy. My general goal here is to provide enough
detail in Kant’s empirical account to show that Kant appeals to empirical
causes throughout his psychology. The
higher faculties are the context within which this claim is the hardest to
defend, so I focus on them.
[25] Because Kant’s discussions of these
powers occurs in the context of a pragmatic
anthropology (and similarly practical sections of his logic), these empirical
accounts also discuss how (if at all) various problems can be treated or
prevented, but this paper focuses on descriptions of the cognitive faculties,
rather than pragmatic suggestions.
[26] Hume gives a bit more explanation
for refusing to consider the origin of sensory impressions, arguing that “the
examination of our sensations belongs more to anatomists [here meant in the
literal sense] and natural philosophers [i.e. scientists of body] than to moral
[i.e. psychologists]; and therefore shall not at present be enter’d upon” (Hume
1740: I.I.ii.1, p. 8).
[27] For a detailed discussion of Kant’s
account of the origin of spatial perceptions, including some reference to his
empirical account and its early modern predecessors, see Hatfield 1990.
[28] The “senses” include, for Kant, not
only the 5 outer senses but also the “inner sense,” and Kant gives an account
of that power in his anthropology and empirical psychology. For more, see 7:161f..
[29] There are several laws governing
transitions effected through imagination, but at least when the imagination
gives rise to sensory representations, these sensations must have, at some
time, been experienced directly by the senses: “To one who has never seen red among the seven colors, we can never
make this sensation comprehensible” (7: 168).
Of course, this applies only to what empiricists would call “simple”
ideas. One can imagine a red horse
without seeing one, as long as one has seen red things and horses.
[30] There are other laws of the
imagination, including those governing the “forming of intuitions in space” and
“affinity” (7:174), but the law of association is sufficient for illustrating
the general structure of Kant’s account, and it is the most important law of
imagination for Kant’s accounts of the influence of imagination on higher cognitive
faculties.
[31] Kant goes on here to explain that
this principle of association is simply a basic causal law, not something that
one should seek to reduce to something else: “To try to explain this in
physiological terms is futile; we are free to use some principle that will
always remain a hypothesis” (7:176).
This positing of a basic principle is consistent with Kant’s willingness
to posit basic powers in scientific explanation, as discussed above.
[32] Kant’s account of symbols deserves a
much fuller treatment than can be given here.
For the purposes of empirical psychology, however, what is most
important about symbols is their causal structure – symbols either are or give
rise to intuitions that in turn give rise to concepts. The concepts of which a symbol causes one to
think are those that are particularly well applied to the intuition that the
symbol represents. (For more on symbols
more generally in Kant, see too Bielefeldt 2003).
[33] The example is Kant’s, but it is not
an excellent example, since the expression “We want to bury the hatchet”
involves both characters – the words that designate objects and actions – and
symbols – the objects and actions that symbolize a more abstract idea. Sharing a peace pipe, holding one’s (unarmed)
hands in the air, or literally burying a hatchet would be more strictly
“symbols” for peace.
[34] Kant adds that “Characters . . . only signify something through association with
intuitions and then leading through them to concepts” (7:191). It is not clear what role Kant thinks
intuitions are supposed to play here. If
the intuitions lead to concepts through the principle of (habitual)
association, then the intuitions are arguably an unnecessary step; one could
simply define the intuitions that lead to the concept as the relevant
“characters.” If the intuitions lead to
the concepts in some other way – perhaps by instantiating the concepts – then
characters are not any different from symbols.
The best way of understanding Kant here, and the way I have chosen to
understand him in this paper, is as distinguishing symbols and characters by
the principles of imagination by means of which each sensory cognition gives
rise to a higher cognition.
[35] Of course, the account given here
does not yet explain how one was able to experience the conjunction of a
particular word with a particular concept, and thus this account cannot yet
serve to explain the ultimate origin of any type of higher cognitions (such as
the concept ‘Substance’), although it may explain the origin of a particular
instance of a higher cognition (that is, why a particular person is thinking
the concept ‘Substance’ at a particular moment).
[36] In some lectures (e.g. 25: 780),
Kant makes a distinction between two different sorts of natural
predispositions, talents and capacities, and he claims that the understanding
is a capacity (like the senses and imagination) while reason and judgment are
talents. Kant uses this distinction to
explain different ways that one can promote each faculty.
[37] See especially Kant’s “Idea for a
Universal History,” Groundwork (4: 395) and Critique of Judgment.
[38] See Kant’s “Conjectures on the
Beginning of Human History.”
[39] Strictly speaking, Kant does not
follow the order I have suggested here.
He discusses deviations from the natural course of the understanding in
the first part of his logic (9:1-90, especially 53-61, 66-81; 24: 155-94,
735-43, 859-84), but only gives detailed laws governing the course of the
understanding itself after this. There are
two reasons for this. First, Kant’s order
of presentation follows Meier’s textbook, which Kant used for his courses. Second, the discussion of deviations from the
natural course of the understanding takes place in what, in the Jaesche Logic,
is set apart as an introduction to logic proper. As empirical elements that do not belong in
logic proper, the sources of error belong in this introduction. The laws governing the healthy understanding
are, of course, logical laws, and so they come in the subsequent logic.
[40] There is one other means of concept formation – instruction – but this cause of concepts involves the interaction between the imagination and the understanding, rather than the laws of the understanding per se. I discuss it in more detail at the end of this section.
[41] In my presentation of these
examples, I have avoided entering into the role that the a priori intuitions of
space and time play because Kant does not emphasize these in his empirical
psychology.
[42] This distinction is a substantial
part of Kant’s empirical response to
Hume on causation (and substance).
Whereas Hume seeks a means by which the understanding/reason can built
up these concepts from impressions, Kant insists that as basic powers, the
higher cognitive faculties are capable of generating new ideas that need not
resemble the empirical causes that provide the occasion for those ideas (just
as sensory ideas need not resemble the physical causes of the relevant
sensation). A detailed comparison of the
empirical psychologies of Kant and Hume would reward further study, but is
beyond the scope of this paper.
[43] J. Michael Young rightly points out,
in his introduction to the Lectures on
Logic, that while “Kant’s approach to logic falls within what can broadly
be called the Aristotelian tradition . . . .[,] Kant does not accept the
tradition uncritically” (Young 1992: xv).
A detailed exploration of the differences between Kant’s logic and that
of the Aristotelian tradition is unnecessary for the purposes of this paper. While detailing Kant’s complete empirical account of cognition would require entering into
the minutiae of Kant’s logic, a few representative rules of inference are
sufficient to give a sufficient general sense for Kant’s empirical account.
[44] It is important to distinguish the
role of analogy as a principle of imagination and a principle of judgment. In the imagination, “empirical ideas that
have frequently followed one another produce a habit in the mind such that when
one idea is produced, the other also comes into being” (7: 176). Here the transition from one idea to the next
is immediate. In the case of the faculty
of judgment, the cognition of a particular judgment
(that two things are similar in many respects) gives rise to a further
judgment (that they are similar in other respects) by means of an implicit
principle of judging.
[45] As Kant does, I use “Many crows are
black” here as a shorthand for the claim that all crows of which one has
experience are black and none are not black.
[46] Kant makes an important exception
for the power of judgment. As he
explains,
Natural understanding can be enriched
through instruction with many concepts and furnished with rules. But the second intellectual faculty, namely,
that of discerning whether something is an instance of the rule or not – the power of judgment (iudicium) – cannot be instructed, but only exercised. That is why its growth is called maturity, and its understanding that
which comes only with years. (7: 199,
see too 25: 538-9)
[47] For more on Kant’s theories of
pedagogy, see Munzel 2001.
[48] Kant uses the term “catechism” here
in a loose sense. The moral catechism is not really a catechism at all, but a Socratic
dialogue.
[49] Kant gets into even more detail about the causal nature of this communication by connecting the transmission of concepts specifically with physical causes that influence one’s sense organs: “it is by this medium [air], when it is put into motion by the vocal organ, the mouth, that we can most readily and fully share in one another’s thoughts . . . . [W]ords are the means best adapted to signifying concepts” (7:155).
Kant’s commitment to this causal
basis for the development of the understanding goes so far, in fact, that he
makes hasty and erroneous claims about those who lack the sensory capacities
for hearing: “a man who, because he was deaf from birth, must also remain dumb
(without speech) can never achieve more than an analogue of reason”
(7:155) and “a man born deaf . . . does [nothing] more than carry on a play of
. . . feelings, without really having and thinking concepts” (7:192-3). Kant’s point here is clearly overdone, and
one would hope that more experience with the deaf, or even just more
thoughtfulness, would have corrected his opinion. The deaf are more than capable of thinking
with concepts and have more than an analogue of reason. But Kant’s conviction that they would be
impaired in the higher cognitive faculties because of a hindrance in sense
organs shows his commitment to a causal explanation of concepts rooted in the
senses, even while he maintains an epistemic position that some of these
concepts are a priori.
[50] This is not to deny that his account
of error also has a first personal, properly normative dimension.
[51] With respect to the faculties of
feeling and desire, Kant’s account of disorders focuses on the affects and
passions. See 7: 252-275; 25:215-18,
414-26, 613-24, 1114ff., 1353-1364, 1526-1530.
See too Borges 2004, Frierson 2005, Sorenson 2002.
[52] These lists of prejudices are not
wholly Kant’s own. To a substantial
degree, Kant borrows his catalog of prejudices from the textbook he used for
his logic courses, G. F. Meier’s Excerpts
from the Doctrine of Reason.
[53] Kant even explicitly identifies
habitual prejudice as “inclination” at 24: 864.
Strictly speaking, prejudices are not inclinations per se, since
inclinations are habitual grounds of desire
while prejudices are habitual grounds of judgment or cognition,
but the similarities are sufficient to warrant Kant’s identification here.
[54] It may be worth noting briefly that
Kant’s explanation of the role of inclination in cognition offers a subtle
response to the question, which he explicitly poses for himself, of “whether
our free choice has an influence on whether we give our approval to a cognition, or withdraw it from it, or whether we even withhold it” (24:156) Kant
denies that the will can directly influence
cognitions, but it influences cognition indirectly
in two important respects. First, one
can willingly shift attention to “those grounds that could in any way bring
about approval for this or that cognition” (24: 158). Second, and arguably more perniciously, the
overall structure of one’s willing faculty – the faculty of desire – can exert
an influence through one’s inclinations.
Thus laziness can lead one to imitate the cognitions of others without a
deliberate choice to imitate them, and self-love can exert a prejudicial
influence on one’s reflection without this influence being deliberate in any
ordinary sense. For more on the role of
the will in influencing cognition and the consequent need for epistemic virtues
of a morally relevant sort, see my “Kant’s Virtue Epistemology” (unpublished
manuscript).
[55] As already noted, inclinations –
especially the inclination for inactivity (laziness) – can play a role even in
prejudices that are primarily due to custom and imitation.
[56] For this account to be complete, the
empirical origin of the relevant inclinations needs to be explained. For Kant’s empirical account of inclination,
see Frierson 2005: 21-2.
[57] Some of these are more common than
others. Hypochondria, for example, is a
mental illness with which Kant famously struggled himself. See Shell 1996.
[58] Kant is a bit ambiguous about how
fall “dullness” goes. Technically, his
definition of it implies that one lacks all capacity to form concepts for
himself. But Kant sometimes seems to
limit the deficiency to an inability to come up with the sorts of new concepts
that would be involved in poetry (see 7:204: “we must not expect him to play
the poet”), suggesting that even those who lack “wit” (and are thereby “dull”)
have enough understanding for “necessities” (7:201).
[59] This is not to deny, of course, that
the loss of any one power – even a sensory one – leaves all the other powers
wholly unaffected. Kant’s discussion of
deafness (7:155, 192-3), discussed above, shows that losing one power can
change the operation of one’s other powers, even preventing it entirely.
[60] Kant suggests a common thread to all
these forms of madness [Verrücktheit] – “the loss of common sense (sensus
communis)” (7:219). This connects
his discussion of mental disorder with a general theme of the Anthropology,
Kant’s arguments against and diagnosis of various forms of “egoism” in mental
life (see 7: 128-30).
[61] For each mental illness, Kant
provides both a German and a Latin term.
I give both here.
[62] {Acknowledgments footnote to be added later.}