Kant’s Theory of Human
Nature
Chapter 3:
Kant’s Empirical
Anthropology
We must . . .
concede that through inner sense we intuit ourselves only as we are internally
affected by our selves, i.e., as far
as inner intuition is concerned we cognize our own subject only as appearance
but not in accordance with what it is in itself. (B156)
Xxx add a couple
other good quotes (one from empirical psychology lectures, one from
anthropology, be sure to cover nonintrospective knowing xxx.
“voluntary action
(which belongs among natural causes as well)” (20:196, KU first tinro)
In the last chapter, we saw Kant’s
“transcendental” account of the human being, his examination of the cognitive,
volitional, and affective dimensions of the human being from the standpoint of
the a priori, normative, autonomously given laws that govern those faculties.
But Kant also engaged intensely in empirical
debates about human beings. The next three chapters focus on different
dimensions of Kant's empirical account of human beings. First, in this chapter,
I examine Kant's overall empirical psychology: his accounts of the different
faculties of human beings, the causal laws that describe the activity of those
faculties, and the natural bases of such powers in “natural predispositions”
and “germs” found in humans’ biological nature.[1] In
chapter five, I turn to two more specific aspects of Kant's empirical
anthropology, his treatments of human evil and of the historical nature of the
human species. And in chapter six, I turn to Kant's accounts of human
difference.
All these elements of Kant’s
empirical account of human beings depend upon the legitimacy of deriving
general claims about human nature from observations – both introspective and
external – of human beings. Kant discusses the challenges facing any such
empirical study in detail, and Kant is so attentive to these challenges that he
has often been taken to reject the possibility of empirical human sciences
altogether. In that context, I begin this chapter with a defense of the
possibility of a Kantian empirical science and an examination of precisely what
Kant's account of human science is. In the context of a better understanding of
the nature and limits of any human science, we can then move on to the details
of Kant’s empirical anthropology.
1. Can there be an empirical science of human beings?
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason would seem to pave the way, fairly
straightforwardly, for the empirical study of human beings. Although Kant
insists throughout the Critique that
“xxx we can have no knowledge of ourselves as we are in ourselves” (xxx), he
always adds “but only as we appear to ourselves xxx” (xxx). For Kant, the human
being, like everything else in nature, has an appearance; there is what he
refers to elsewhere as a “homo phenomenon” (MM 6:418), referring to his famous
distinction between “phenomena” – objects as they appear to us in the world of
experience – and “noumena” – things as they are in themselves independent of
the possibility of experiencing them. And when Kant lays out the principles
that human beings can know a priori about objects of experience, he defends
these principles as transcendental conditions of the possibility of objects in time -- the form of inner sense that
governs both inner psychological “objects” and external, physical objects –
precisely in order to ensure that all experience
– inner as well as outer – will be governed by these principles[KP2] . Moreover, even in precisely the parts of
the Critique of Pure Reason where
Kant most emphasizes the possibility of a human freedom that is beyond the
possibility of empirical study, he also insists that human beings insofar as
they appear in the world are subject
to such study: “all the actions of a human being are determined in accord with
the order of nature,” and “if we could investigate all the appearances . . .
there would be no human action we could not predict with certainty”(A549/B577).[2] He gives a striking example to illustrate
this general point.
Let us take a voluntary action, for example, a malicious lie . . .
. First of all, we endeavor to discover
the motives to which it has been due, and then, secondly, we proceed to
determine how far the action . . . can be imputed to the offender. As regards the first question, we trace the
empirical character of the action to its sources, finding these in defective
education, bad company, in part also in the viciousness of a natural
disposition insensitive to shame . . . .
We proceed in this enquiry just as we should in ascertaining for a
given natural effect the series of its determining causes. But although we believe the action is thus
determined, we nonetheless blame the agent[j3]. XXX ADD MORE OF THIS QUOTE TO MAKE CLEAR THAT
THIS IMPLIES FREEDOM XXX (A554-55/B 582-83, emphasis added; cf. too 29:1019-20)
In the Grounding,
Kant reiterates this: “everything which takes place [is] determined without
exception in accordance with laws of nature” (4:455).[3] And
in the Critique of Practical Reason, he insists that if we knew the
relevant preconditions, “we could calculate a human being’s conduct for the
future with as much certainty as a lunar or solar eclipse” (5: 99)[j4]
Despite this apparent insistence on
and even apparent transcendental grounding for the empirical study of human
beings, there are four main reasons to call into question whether Kant can
allow for any kind of scientific study of human beings at all. First and most
basically, Kant claims in the Critique of
Pure Reason that “experience . . . gives us no
true universality” (A1-2), which seems to preclude the possibility of
any empirical human science applying to human beings in general[4] One
might be able to have descriptions of various humans in various contexts, but
no real human science of the sort proposed by philosophers ranging from Locke
and Hume to Wolff and Tetens, nor a real psychology of the sort practice by
human scientists today. Second, Kant seems to explicitly reject the possibility of any
empirical human science in his Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science (xxx), [KP5] the book in which Kant extended the a priori
principles of the first Critique into
the foundations of physics. There, in the context of discussing what sorts of
study can be made into a proper science, Kant explicitly says, “The empirical
doctrine of the soul [psychology] can . . . never become . . . a science of the
soul, nor even a psychological experimental doctrine” (4:471[u6] ). Third, an empirical – and especially a
causal – account of human action might seem to conflict with Kant’s claims
about human freedom (discussed in the last chapter).[5]
Finally, Kant often mentions specific challenges with the study of human beings
(especially in introspection), both epistemic concerns such as the fact that
“if a human being notices that someone is . . . trying to study him, he . . .
either . . . cannot show himself as
he really is or . . . does not want
to be known as he is” (7:121) and moral dangers such as that “self-observation
. . . is the most direct path to illuminism or even terrorism” (7:133). These
comments might seem to suggest that even if empirical human science is possible
in principle, it is both unreliable
and dangerous in practice.[6] In
the rest of this section, I take up each of these issues in turn. The result by
the end of this section will be a clearer sense of the challenges facing the
empirical study of human beings and thereby a clearer sense of Kant’s approach
to such study.
With respect to the problem of
universality, the concern is both easy to state and easy to alleviate. Kant’s
accounts of human nature purport to be universal. He says that anthropology must
begin with “universal knowledge” and that the subject of anthropology is human
beings as such. His accounts of mental powers, the laws that govern them, and
the predisposition that underlie these are all intended to refer to human
beings as such. Of course, Kant includes some
empirical claims that are not universal, such as his descriptions of women
and various races (see chapter six). But the vast majority of Kant’s empirical
human science is universal. The apparent problem arises because of Kant’s
general account of knowledge, in which Kant connects universality with
necessity and argues that the only possible basis for universal claims is a
priori reasoning. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he says, “Experience tells us, indeed, what is, but not that it must
necessarily be so, and not otherwise. It therefore gives us no true
universality” (A1-2, cf. B3-4, A91/B124, A196/B241). Whereas in his
empirical studies of human beings, Kant seems to want to extend his claims to all
people without exception, his general claims about universality would make this
extension seem “merely fictitious” (A196/B241). One seems forced to choose
between anthropology being universal and its being empirical, when Kant clearly
states that it is both.
In fact, however, Kant’s claims
about the connection between universality and a priori reasoning are limited to
what he calls “strict
universality.” [KP7] In the first Critique, Kant repeatedly
mentions a kind of universality that experience can provide, an “assumed and comparative universality” (B3):
“empirical rules . . . can acquire through induction . . . comparative
universality, that is, extensive applicability” (B124/A91). According to this
kind of universality,
We can properly only say,
therefore, that, so far as we have hitherto observed, there is no exception to
this or that rule . . . Empirical universality is . . . an arbitrary extension
of a validity holding in most cases to one which holds in all, for instance, in
the proposition “all bodies are heavy.” (B 3-4[u8] )
Given its focus on a priori conditions of
experience, it is unsurprising that first Critique downplays the role of
this kind of empirical universal judgment. But Kant’s insistence that this
universality is merely “extensive applicability” is only a contrast to that
strict universality according to which “no exception is allowed as possible”
(B4, my emphasis). As his example of heavy bodies makes clear, such judgments
need not be taken as merely claims that something is widespread. They hold
without exception, but with the possibility of exception.[7][KP9]
Kant’s response to the
concern about universality has three important implications for the nature of
his empirical study of human beings. First, Kant’s account of comparative
universality shows how empirical human sciences, even when they purport to
describe human beings as such, can be compatible with Kant’s account of
knowledge. Second, this way of saving empirical human science shows that such
study must always be taken to provide an account of how human beings in fact
are, but not how they must be. This
contingency in human nature is what Russell rightly saw but mistakenly took to
have implications for transcendental philosophy. And, as we will see in the
next chapter, Kant makes use (rightly) of this contingency in human nature to
explain the nature of human evil. Finally, the fact that empirical human
sciences are always only comparatively universal requires and allows a healthy
degree of humility about the status of any particular claims within
anthropology. Kant provides detailed empirical arguments in order to go beyond
mere claims about widespread human
phenomena toward generalizations that apply to all human beings. But
because these generalizations provide only comparative universality, Kant (and
Kantian anthropology) need not take any particular claims to be infallible.
More data might require revision of
such claims, though Kant thinks that he has good (but not indefeasible) reasons
for thinking that no such data will arise.
The second concern about the
possibility of a Kantian empirical anthropology arises from a claim in Kant's Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science:
The empirical doctrine of the soul [i.e., human mind] 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 20:238[8],
28:679)
Many[9]
have taken this passage to imply that Kant opposes any kind of serious
empirical study of the causal principles underlying mental life. But Kant’s
argument against psychology as a science employs very specific objections
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). What Kant objects to is 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).[10]
Elsewhere, in fact, Kant even insists,
The sphere of human beings . . . deserves to
be presented together as a whole, and not alongside of other sciences. For
physics is knowledge of the object of outer sense, and the knowledge of human
beings as the object of inner sense, constitutes just such a sphere.
Consequently, it deserves just such effort, and to be treated as such a science
in academia, as is physics. (25:472-3)[11]
Kant does not here mean that empirical anthropology will be a science
in the same sense as physics, since it will not have a mathematical, a priori
foundation. But anthropology can still bring the phenomena of inner sense under
empirically-determined rules, albeit only comparatively universal ones.
The third concern about the
possibility of Kantian empirical science arises from Kant’s account of human
freedom. As we saw in the last chapter, Kant’s account of freedom involves a
commitment to what Henry Allison has called an “Incorporation Thesis,”
according to which human beings act only on motives that they “incorporate”
into maxims. Many commentators have rightly pointed out that this account of
free human action offers a different conception of moral psychology than the
traditional empiricist belief-desire model according to which human beings are
simply motivated by the strongest active desire.[12] But
this insightful alternative approach to thinking about human action can seem to
conflict with Kant’s empirical
account of human action. In particular, Kant argues that human actions are
susceptible to causal and even historical influences and offers a model of
human action that is remarkably similar to the empiricist belief-desire model.
Many Kantians attracted by the role of freedom and the related incorporation
thesis are resistant to the idea that there might be a Kantian psychology that empirically explains human behavior. As
one such commentator puts it, “if the moral law determines choice by exerting a
force that is stronger than the alternatives, moral conduct will result from
the balance of whatever psychological forces are acting on the will . . . It is
not clear that this model leaves room for any real notion of will or choice”
(Reath 1989: 290-91).[13]
Given Kant’s
transcendental idealism, however, an empirical and even causal model of human
behavior does leave room for real choice, though not within the
empirical psychology itself. Kant’s account of agency in terms of the
Incorporation Thesis is an account of transcendental freedom, an account that,
for Kant at least, is consistent with the familiar empiricist picture of
agency[KP10] .[14] [15][u11] As
we saw in the last chapter, Kant's transcendental anthropology of cognition
shows that human beings experience everything
– including themselves – in terms of a structure of cognition that
interprets change in terms of causal relationships. But this metaphysics of the
empirical world leaves room for a different standpoint from which freedom is
possible, and Kant's transcendental anthropology of desire – his moral
philosophy – makes clear that human agents must
see themselves as free causes of their actions. Thus while human scientists can
and must investigate human actions as natural events that occur in accordance
with empirically discernible causal powers, human agents can and must
deliberate and evaluate[16]
actions as the results of free choices. And, conversely, while there is nothing
wrong with focusing on agency from the standpoint of freedom (as so many
Kantians do), the possibility of describing human actions from the perspective
of freedom does not preclude the possibility of giving causal accounts of such
actions within the context of an empirical human science. This implies, of
course, that Kant’s empirical anthropology is only empirical; it does not provide access to the nature of the
human being as it is in itself, what Kant calls the “homo noumenon” (MM 6:418,
cf. 7:397-400). Kant does believe that it is possible to have access to what
the human being is like in itself (as we saw in the last chapter), but
empirical anthropology provides no such access.
The fourth and final
problem for the possibility of a rigorous empirical investigation of human
beings lies in specific problems that arise when trying to observe and study
humans. In his Anthropology, Kant
says about his proposed science of human beings,
[A]ll such attempts to arrive
at such a science with thoroughness encounter considerable difficulties that
are inherent in human nature itself.
1. If a human being notices that someone is
observing him and trying to study him, he will either appear embarrassed
(self-conscious) and cannot show
himself as he really is; or he dissembles, and does not want to be known as he is.
2. Even if he only wants to
study himself, he will reach a critical point, particularly as concerns his
condition in affect, which normally does not allow dissimulation: that is to say, when the incentives are active, he
does not observe himself, and when he does observe himself, the incentives are
at rest.
3. Circumstances of place and
time, when they are constant, produce habits
which, as is said, are second nature, and make it difficult for the human being
to judge how to consider himself, but even more difficult to judge how he
should form an idea of others with whom he is in contact; for the variation of
conditions in which the human being is placed by his fate or, if he is an
adventurer, places himself, make it very difficult for anthropology to rise to
the rank of a formal science. (7:120-1)
And in a draft of
his anthropology, Kant adds,
[T]he I which has been observed by itself is
a sum total of so many objects of inner perception that psychology has plenty
to do in tracing everything that lies hidden in it. And psychology may not ever
hope to complete this task and answer satisfactorily the question: “What is the
human being?” (7:398-99)
For Kant, empirical
study of human beings proceeds by means of both introspection and observation
of others, and both of these forms of study face several of the problems Kant
describes here: mental life is just intrinsically complex, human beings
typically act differently when being observed,[17]
self-observation is inhibited by the fact that many of the most interesting and
important activities in human life preclude the calm and attentive work of
introspection,[18]
and human beings can develop contingent characteristics – habits of time and
place – that seem essential. The
result of all of this can be a desperation about the possibility of ever
(empirically) answering the question, “What is the human being?”[19]
Despite these cautions, Kant claims
that “an anthropology . . . that is systematically designed” is possible and
“yields an advantage for the reading public,” including the promotion of “the
growth of [this] science for the common good” (7:121-2). Kant even holds that
such an anthropology begins with a “knowledge of human beings” that is
“general” (7:120) and even that “anthropology . . . is provided with a content
by inner sense” (7: xxxfrom draft anthro, cf. 25:252, 863-5). And while Kant
warns about the dangers of such introspection, he also insists that it can be
done in a way that is relatively free from such dangers. Self-observation
becomes dangerous when “we make supposed discoveries of what we ourselves have
carried into ourselves” (7:133), acting as thought the
apparently involuntary flow of our thoughts is due to some sort of supernatural
inspiration. But Kant insists that observing oneself is also a duty (6:441-2),
and he gives both general advice and specific examples of how to introspect
well. Moreover, Kant insists that this introspection provides a basis for
further study, in that one can make use of the general knowledge gained through
introspection to interpret others. Kant explains,
If we want to judge about other people, we must alter our point of
view, namely
1. transpose my point of view
and then
2. put myself in the other’s
point of view . . . To take a point of view is a skill which one can acquire by
practice. (25:475)
Moreover, Kant suggests that reading the right kind of literature – he
suggests Shakespeare and Montaigne, for example[20][KP12] [u13] –
can help cultivate proper self-observation and supplement the limits of
self-study in the acquisition of general knowledge of human beings. Given that
general knowledge, travel and the reading of travel literature provides further
material for reflection on both human nature in general and “local knowledge”
of the varieties of human beings.[21]
Disciplined self-study, supplemented by careful study of others and reading
literature by those skilled in putting themselves into others’ points of view,
can alleviate the problems faced by any attempt “to observe human beings and
their conduct, [and] to bring their phenomena under rules, [which] is the
purpose of anthropology” (25:472). While Kant doubts the possibility of a wholly satisfactory empirical
psychology, his anthropology aims to develop as full an empirical account as
possible, or at least an empirical account of human beings “from which a
prudent use in life can . . . be drawn” (25:472, cf. 7: 119, xxx).
In this section, we
have seen four central objections to the possibility of an empirical science of
human beings within Kant’s philosophy. From Kant’s responses to these
objections, we have made clear what form such a Kantian empirical anthropology
must take. It will be only a science “improperly so called” in that it will
provide only comparatively universal claims about what human beings in fact are
in general, rather than what human nature is of necessity. And this “science”
will not be particularly mathematical, but rather will classify the phenomena
of human life into a “systematic natural doctrine of the internal sense,” that
is, a structured account of the different sorts of mental states operative in
human life that brings these phenomena under general rules. The account will
also be empirical both in its method and in its subject matter. Empirical
anthropology does not aim to give an account of the thoughts and motives of
humans qua free agents, but only an
account of the thoughts and motives that appear
in our experience of human beings. Thus this anthropology is a “third-person”
psychology rather than a “first-person” account of how to think or choose (see
especially 7: xxx from draft xxx for clarification of this point). Finally,
empirical anthropology is difficult
and fallible. Kant refers to the
introspection required as a “hard descent into the Hell of self-knowledge”
(25:7, check quote and translation xxx) and insists that both self-observation
itself and the extension of introspection to claims about human nature require
“skill.” One must work through the challenges of dissimulation and deceit, in
oneself as well as others, and the difficult task of distinguishing mere
habitual norms from true aspects of human nature as such. And one must
carefully observe ones own tendencies without succumbing to the dangers of
either fanatical obsession with one’s passing mental states nor self-deception
about one’s motives. Because one can never be completely sure that one has
avoided these problems, one’s empirical anthropology remains ever open to
revision in the light of new data or better understandings of old data. In the
end, though, Kant thinks that it is possible to get a “science” of human nature
that is empirical, systematic, and universal, even if also incomplete and
fallible.
Given that a science
of human beings is possible, we can now turn to the content of such a science. The rest of this chapter will look at
three key elements of Kant's empirical anthropology. First, I explain the role
of “faculties” and “powers” in Kant's account of the human being, and in this
context I show how Kant extends the work of Mendellsohn, Tetens, and Crusius,
who all argued against Wolff’s attempt to reduce the powers of the human soul
to a single one. Second, I discuss the relationships between these powers and
how Kant moves from his account of powers to accounts of the causal laws in
accordance with which human mental life operates. Finally, I turn to the
biological bases of these powers in “natural predispositions” and “germs” in
human nature, explaining in this context Kant's innovative work in the
philosophy of biology insofar as this bears on his account of the human
organism.
2. Kant’s Faculty Psychology
In chapter two, we saw how Wolff’s
attempt to reduce the variety of different causal powers in the human mind (or
“soul”) to a single faculty of representation was resisted both by his
“followers,” such as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn and Tetens, and by opponents such
as Crusius. Both Mendelssohn and Tetens, in different ways, developed tripartite
conceptions of the human mind, and Tetens, in particular, began the process of
systematically working out a wide variety of different mental powers. Kant
continued this tradition of reaction against Wolff with a detailed and
systematic account of the structure of the human mind. Kant defends his own
tripartite distinction of the human mind into faculties of cognition, feeling,
and desire, on the grounds that
We [can] have pleasure or displeasure without desiring or abhorring . .
. Pleasure or displeasure is thus something entirely different from the faculty
of desire. . . There are also many representations which are connected with
neither pleasure nor displeasure, and thus the cognitive faculty is wholly
distinct from the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. (29:877-8)[22]
Each of the three
basic faculties includes several distinct basic powers, none of which is
reducible to others. Within the faculty of cognition, for instance, Kant
includes distinct basic powers such as the five senses, imagination, understanding,
and reason, each of which is governed by its own laws. These powers can be
organized, however, in terms of a distinction between “higher” and “lower”
powers that cuts across the tripartite division of faculties.
Kant adopts the distinction between “higher” and “lower” faculties of
cognition, feeling, and desire from Baumgarten, but whereas Baumgarten sought
to reduce all of these to a single faculty of representation, Kant (like
Crusius[23])
insists that they are irreducible. For Kant, “lower” faculties are primarily
receptive, while “higher” faculties are “self-active” or “spontaneous” (28:228,
29:880, 28:584), by which Kant does not mean the transcendental freedom of the homo noumenon but a “comparative concept
of freedom” according to which “actions are caused from within, by
representations produced by our own powers, whereby desires are evoked on
occasion of circumstances and hence actions are produced at our own discretion”
(5:96).[24] Thus
we can broadly outline six different “faculties” in Kant’s empirical
psychology: higher and lower cognition, higher and lower feeling, and higher
and lower desire.
With respect to cognition, the lower faculty is referred to broadly as
“sensibility” (Sinnlichkeit) and includes the senses (Sinne) and
the imagination, each of which is further subdivided (Cf. 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. The higher faculty of cognition is often
referred to by the general term “understanding” (Verstand) and includes
three specific cognitive powers: reason, the understanding (Verstand) in
a narrow sense, and the power of judgment.[25]
Moreover, just as “there is a higher and a lower cognitive faculty[,] so there
is also a rational and a sensible feeling of pleasure or displeasure (and so it
is also with the faculty of desire)” (29:877).[26] As with the cognitive faculty, the
distinction between the higher and lower faculties of desire is based on the
distinction between the senses and the understanding: “all desires are . . .
[either] intellectual or sensitive” (29:894).
But in the case of desire, what is relevant is not the nature of the
desire itself but the cognitive state that produces the desire.[27] “The representations which produce
determinations [of desire] are either sensible or intellectual” (28:
674-5). Insofar as a desire is the
direct result of the senses or unmediated imagination, is it part of the
“lower” faculty of desire. Insofar as it
proceeds from the understanding or reason, a desire falls under the “higher”
faculty of desire.
We can summarize Kant’s taxonomy of
faculties of the soul as follows:
The faculties (and powers) of the soul
|
|
Cognition
(representations) |
Feeling
(satisfaction and dissatisfaction) |
Desire (impelling
grounds, incentives) |
|
Higher
(intellectual, active, spontaneous) |
Understanding
(including the distinct powers of judgment, understanding, and reason) |
Pleasure and
displeasure, “satisfactions or dissatisfactions which depend on the manner in
which we cognize the objects through concepts” |
Motives, motive
grounds (including both pure and impure motives) |
|
Lower (sensible,
passive, receptive) |
Sensibility
(including distinct powers of the senses and imagination) |
“satisfactions and
dissatisfactions which depend on the manner in which we are [sensibly]
affected by objects” (28: 254) |
Stimuli, motive
causes, impulses. |
Kant’s
defense of this complex taxonomy takes place on several levels. Most generally,
Kant sides with Crusius against Wolff with respect to the reducibility of
mental phenomena to a single overarching faculty. In a discussion of the
science of bodies, Kant defends a broadly “Newtonian” as opposed to “Cartesian”
approach to the study of natural phenomena. Descartes “explains all [physical] phenomena from the
shape and the general motive power of bodies” while
E.g., the imagination
in the human being is an effect that we cognize to be not the same with other
effects of the mind. Therefore the power related to this effect can only be
called a power of the imagination (as a basic power). Likewise, under the title
moving forces, repulsive force and attractive force are basic powers. Several have thought that they had to assume a single
basic power for the sake of the unity of the substance and even have thought to
gain cognition of it simply by coining the common
title [KP14] of
various basic powers, e.g. that the basic power of the soul is the power of
representing the world. This would be the same as if I were to say: the sole
basic power of matter is moving force, since repulsion and attraction both
stand under the common concept of movement, yet one desires to know whether the
former could also be derived from the
latter, which is impossible. (8:181n)
While we must of course seek to find more fundamental basic powers, we
are not justified in pretending that the forces of gravity and magnetism or of
imagination and will are in fact reducible to a single basic power. Kant
insists, “there must be several [basic powers] because we cannot reduce
everything to one” (29:773-822).[28]
With respect to Kant’s
most important distinctions – between the three basic faculties of soul and
between higher and lower faculties – Kant largely draws from earlier analyses
to defend the irreducibility of these mental states. Kant seems to see the
distinction between cognition and desire as straightforward, once one abandons
the requirement of a unified and wholly reductive psychology. Still, following
Crusius and xxx, he argues that cognition and desire are distinct both
because not all cognitions give rise to desires (or aversions) (29:877-8) and
because of
the basic functions of cognition and desire are distinct:
cognitions represent the world, while desires effect change in the world
through action. Isolating feeling as a faculty distinct from both desire and
sensation is a more important move for Kant. While Sulzer, Mendelssohn, and
Baumgarten provided important background, Kant clearly argues from our
experience of aesthetic pleasure to the claim that pleasure is a faculty
distinct from cognition and desire because one can feel pleasures that go
beyond mere cognition but that do not actually give rise to desire. Finally,
the distinction between higher and lower faculties is a crucial psychological
correlate to much of Kant’s work in his transcendental philosophy. While it is
important to keep these projects distinct, Kant’s distinction between concepts
and intuitions in his Critical philosophy both informs and is informed by his
claim that the faculty of cognition has a higher, intellectual set of powers
and a lower, sensuous set of powers that are irreducible to one another. By making
this distinction, Kant xxx. Flesh this
section out based on how much I say about this in the last chapter. Xxx also
reference article in Kain book (by Caygill). xxx
In the
end, then, Kant not only sides with those who sought to move away from Wolff’s
reductivist single-faculty psychology, he also offers the most sophisticated
arguments and the most clear and complete taxonomy of the mind available in
late 18th century Germany. For a philosopher best known for his work
on a priori arguments in epistemology and ethics, the richness of Kant’s
contribution to the empirical study of human mental faculties is striking. xxx
3. Causal Laws Governing Human
Beings
Kant did not discuss the structure of human mental faculties simply to
argue against Wolff’s reduction of the mind to a single faculty of
representation. Unlike Crusius, he also did not distinguish faculties in order
to thereby establish his ethics based on a volitional faculty distinct from the
faculty of cognition. And unlike Tetens, he did not expect his complex
psychology to provide the foundation for his whole philosophy (though the
tripartite structure of the mind did, as we pointed out in the last chapter,
provide a framework for Kant’s three transcendental Critiques). For Kant, getting clear on the different faculties of
the human mind is crucial for the sake of a full empirical psychology because
“the concept of cause lies in the concept of power” (28:564) and in psychology
we seek “natural laws of the thinking self” based on “observations about the
play of our thoughts” (A347/B405, cf. 25:472). That is, each distinct mental
power will be governed by its own causal laws (including laws governing how it
relates to other mental powers), and a complete empirical psychology will
involve an account of the laws governing the various causal powers of the human
being both separately and in relation to each other.[29]
For Kant, the different faculties of
the soul are causally related to each other ordered such that
Pleasure precedes the faculty of desire, and the cognitive faculty
precedes pleasure . . . . [W]e can
desire or abhor nothing which is not based on pleasure or displeasure. For that which gives me no pleasure, I
also do not want. Thus pleasure or
displeasure precedes desire or abhorrence.
But still I must first cognize what I desire, likewise what gives me
pleasure or displeasure; accordingly, both are based on the cognitive faculty
(29:877-8).[30]
Moreover, “all
desires have a relation to activity and are the causality thereof” (25:1514,
cf. 29:1024), and Kant even claims that desire plays the same role in
psychology that motive forces (momentum, etc) play in physics (25:577).[31] Thus
for any human action, there is a
sequence of causes that can be traced as follows:
Cognition à Feeling of pleasure (or pain) à Desire à Action
At any step along
this progression, the causal chain could be cut off. For example, when a normal
human being tastes a mango (cognition), that taste gives pleasure (feeling),
that pleasure causes a desire for the mango, and that desire leads one to eat
(or continue eating) the mango. But when a normal human being sees a beautiful
flower (cognition), this sight gives rise to pleasure, but that pleasure is
“disinterested,” that is, it gives rise to no subsequent desire. And when one
learns that the capital of
This overall sketch, of course,
requires a lot of filling in. In particular, Kant needs to explain what gives
rise to cognitions in human beings, how and when those cognitions give rise to
pleasures, and how and when those pleasures give rise to desires.[33] As
Kant offers the details of all of these causal laws, his account gets extremely
detailed, so here I only highlight aspects of his account. With respect to the
lower faculty of cognition, Kant distinguishes between the five traditional
senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), the “inner sense” (our
ability to “observe” our own inner mental states), and the imagination (which,
for Kant, includes memory, foresight, and the imagination as a “fictive
faculty” to think of things that we never experience). Kant does not say much
about the five senses, laying out only the most general descriptions, such as
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” (7:155) and that sight, touch, and hearing are
“mechanical” while taste and smell are “chemical” (25:495). With respect to
lower faculties of cognition, the imagination gets the most extensive causal
treatment, and Kant posits that the imagination is governed by three
fundamental laws: affinity, forming intuitions in space, and association.[34] The
last of these, for example, is the principle that “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; cf. 25: xxx, xxx,
xxx; 28:236, 585, 673, 739; 29:883). Thus hearing a particular song may trigger
thoughts of the person with whom one often listened to that song, or the
thought of a certain book may cause one to think of the place where one read
that book. The imagination also figures centrally in Kant's account of
language: it is by virtue of customary association between sounds and thoughts
that those sounds (and eventually written words) come to stand as symbols for
those thoughts.
Kant’s discussion of the higher
faculty of cognition is more complex. This faculty is subdivided into three
basic powers: reason, the understanding, and judgment: “quote on the roles of
each of these” xxx. The power of judgment operates according to the principles
governing analogy[35]
– “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). The understanding generates certain
concepts as an immediate consequence of sensory perceptions, but most concepts
of the understanding are generated through chains of comparison, reflection,
and abstraction. With respect to the former, Kant argues that “on the occasion
of experience” certain “concepts have arisen through the understanding,
according to its nature” (28:233), such as the basic concepts of causation and
substance that make it possible for our experience to be intelligible as
experience of an objective world. Even these only become articulated as such[KP15]
through a process of “reflection” (28:233) on the experience that they help to
structure. With respect to more empirical concepts, Kant explains how, for
example, the sensory cognition of “a spruce, a willow, and a linden” can lead
one to
compare[e] these objects with one another [and] note that they are
different from one another in regard to the trunk, the branches, the leaves,
etc.; but next . . . reflect on that which they have in common among
themselves, trunk, branches, and leaves themselves, and . . . abstract from the
quantity, the figure, etc. of these; and thus . . . acquire a concept of a
tree. (Jasche Logic, 9:95; see too 24: 252-3,
753, 907)
Reason, finally,
operates through principles of logic: the cognition of the premises of an
argument give rise to a cognition of the conclusion of that argument. When I
think about the facts that “Socrates is a human” and “All humans are mortal,” I
am led to the thought that “Socrates is mortal.”
So far, of course, Kant's account of
how the higher faculties work also tracks well how they ought to work, but Kant knows that people’s higher faculties often
do not function according to these ideal laws, and he develops an account of
how “other activities of the soul . . . are connected with the judgments of the
understanding” to generate a “mixed effect” that can be mistaken “to be a
judgment of the understanding” (R2244, 16:283-4).[36] Such
mixed effects are ultimately the result of what Kant calls “prejudices,” which
function as alternative principles by which some cognitions give rise to others
according to causes other than the understanding strictly speaking. For
example, “the prejudice of the prestige of the age” leads some to favor the
writers of antiquity more than they should, thereby “elevating the relative
worth of their writings to an absolute worth” (9:79). For those affected by
this prejudice, cognitions of claims associated with a particular ancient
writer will immediately give rise to affirmation of those claims, a transition
inexplicable in terms of properly functioning higher cognitive powers alone.
Prejudices primarily arise from “imitation, custom, and inclination” (9:76),
and Kant especially highlights the role of intellectual laziness in cultivating
prejudices. Of course, prejudices do not wholly displace higher cognitive
faculties, but prejudices provide a way for Kant to make sense causally of
transitions between beliefs that are not actually justified, and thus cannot be
explained in terms of the higher cognitive faculties strictly speaking. This
account of prejudice, supplemented with detailed accounts of various prejudices
and an account of how the higher and lower faculties of cognition relate, make
up his overall account of the faculty of cognition.
Kant's account of the faculty of the
feeling of pleasure and displeasure is the most original, complex, and
confusing aspect of his faculty psychology. The originality lies in Kant's
claim the faculty of feeling can be reduced to neither cognition nor volition,
and Kant's basis for this claim is his account of aesthetic pleasure. Even
those who argued against Wolff’s attempt to reduce all the basic powers of the
soul to a single one generally ended up describing feeling pleasure as either a
subjective form of cognition like color or scent (e.g. xxx or xxx) or as a constitutive
part of desire (e.g. xxx or xxx). But Kant explains,
We have pleasure or displeasure without desiring or abhorring, e.g. if
we see a beautiful area, then it enchants us, be we will not on that account
wish at once to possess it. Pleasure or
displeasure is thus something entirely different from the faculty of desire.
(29:877)
Kant’s point here
can also be tied to his more general claim that asdf
What does it
actually mean for pleasure to be a distinct basic power? First, pleasure for
Kant is not merely a component part of volition. While Kant insists that all
desire depends upon feeling, and even that most feelings of pleasure will be
intimately linked with desires, the feeling of pleasure is distinct from both
the desire with which it is linked and the cognition that gives rise to it. To
whatever extent we might want to think of volitional components or cognitive
components of feelings, no feeling can, for Kant, be reduced to these components. Second, this insistence upon its
distinctive status requires that Kant articulate an account of precisely what
the faculty of feeling is in its own right. Pleasures cannot merely be “the
feelings that cause desires,” since not all pleasures do cause desires. Nor can pleasures just be a kind of sensation of
the world, since pleasure is not reducible to cognition.[37]
And in fact, Kant does offer both a general account of
the nature of feeling and details about the causes and effects of feelings. One
thing should be immediately noted: while Kant does allow that there are
radically different kinds of feelings, he holds that all feelings are, in some
sense, feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Thus Kant will often use “pleasure
and displeasure” as synonymous with “feeling.” Kant rejects the dominant (at
the time) Leibnizian-Wolffian definition of pleasure as “the [obscure] sensible
representation of the perfection of an object” (20:226, cf. 5:227) and offers
in its place at least two important “definitions” of his own:
(1)
“The consciousness of the causality of a representation with respect to the
state of the subject for maintaining
it in that state can here designate in general what is called pleasure[KP16] ” (5:220,
cf. 20:230, xxxcheck: R556, 15:241; 25:459, 785; 28: 247, 586; 29:890; 6:212,
7:231)
(2)
“Pleasure is the representation of the agreement of an object or of an action
with the subjective conditions of life” (5:9n; cf. 5:204; check xxx R567,
15:246, R586, 15:252, R1838-9, 16:133, 25:167-8, 181, 1501; 7:231; 28:247, 586,
29:891).
First, then,
pleasure is defined simply as a mental state (a “representation”) oriented
towards preserving itself. The feeling of pleasure just is a mental state in which one wants [KP17] to
remain, while feelings of displeasure are feelings of wanting to be in a
different state. But Kant connects this feeling of wanting to remain in one’s
state with the concept of “life,” which he connects with self-activity and
sometimes defines as a “faculty of a being to act in accordance with laws of
the faculty of desire” (5:9n, cf. 28:275).[38] In
the case of human beings, Kant identifies “life” with the full set of mental
powers of cognition, feeling, and desire (28:xxx). The general idea here is
that when one’s something promotes the activity of one’s powers, one gets a
distinctive mental state that reflects this advancement of activity; this
mental state is called “pleasure[KP18] .”
When something inhibits one’s activity, one feels displeasure. In a lecture on
metaphysics, Kant connects these two definitions:
The feeling of the promotion of life is pleasure, and the feeling of
the hindrance of life is displeasure. Pleasure is when a representation
contains a ground for being determined, for producing again the same
representation, or for continuing it when it is there. (28:586)[39]
Thus we might say
that when one feels pleasure, one feels like continuing in one’s state because
one’s state is conducive to the activity of all one’s powers. When one feels
displeasure one feels like ending one’s state because one’s state is an
inhibition of activity. Strictly speaking, these definitions are best
understood such that the first literally defines pleasure and pain, while the
second explains these powers teleologically. That is, one has
a feeling[u19]
Given his overall definition(s) of
pleasure, Kant divides the possible objects of pleasure into different
categories. Most fundamentally, and central to Kant's insistence that pleasure
is not merely an aspect of desire, Kant claims that pleasures can be
distinguished into those that give rise to desires and those that do not.[40] The
key to this distinction is that desires are “objective” in that they are
directed towards bringing about their objects in the world, while pleasures, in
themselves, are wholly subjective, both in that they reflect something subjective about
the subject (whether one’s overall mental state [KP20] is
conducive to life) and in that they aim to preserve themselves subjectively (as
mental states[KP21] ).
But generally, preserving one’s pleasurable mental states will require
acquiring those objects or objective states of affairs that bring one pleasure.
If one experiences pleasure at the taste of a mango, one will need to continue
eating the mango in order to continue experiencing the pleasure. Thus pleasure,
in order to “produce again the same representation or . . . continue it”
(28:586) must give rise to a desire, a mental state that actually affects the
world by causing one to continue eating the mango. Kant calls these sorts of
pleasures “interested” or “practical” pleasures, and such pleasures are always
connected with desire. But Kant proposes that some pleasures are not interested and do not depend upon
the actual presence of their objects. Kant suggests, for example,
We have pleasure or displeasure without desiring or abhorring, e.g., if
we see a beautiful area, then it enchants us, but we will not on that account
wish to possess it. Pleasure or displeasure is thus something entirely
different from the faculty of desire. (29:878)
Lest one
think, in this case, that such a pleasure is practical in the sense that at
least one desires to remain in the presence of the beautiful area, Kant
emphasizes (elsewhere),
Xxxquote from ku
xxx.
In these cases, the
source of one’s pleasure arises purely from reflection, and the actuality of
the object of one’s reflection is not necessary in order to promote the “free
play of the powers of representation” (5:217) that grounds the feeling of
pleasure. Kant's aesthetics (discussed briefly in chapter three) is focused on
a transcendental account of these disinterested pleasures. For the purpose of
his empirical account, his main purpose is to show that there are such
pleasures.
With the exception of aesthetic
feelings, then, pleasures sustain themselves by means of the faculty of desire.
The faculty of desire is, in many respects, the most complicated faculty in
terms of its causal laws, and explaining it fully requires a discussion of the
biological roots of causal laws in Kant’s account. In general, though, the
faculty of desire is “the faculty to be, by means of one’s representations, the
cause of the objects of those representations” (5:9n, 6:211) or “the
self-determination of a subject’s power through the representation of something
in the future as an effect of this representation” (7:251). The key point here
is that desire is a mental state by virtue of which one becomes
a cause of the objects of that mental state. Whereas cognition merely thinks about its objects and feeling
merely enjoys its objects, desire
actually brings about its objects[KP22] .
To desire something is to have the requisite mental state for bringing that
thing about. Even when desire is not fully self-conscious (as in animals, or as
with bare urges) or when it is merely a response to sensory stimuli, it still
represents a mental state directed towards an object as a cause of bringing
that object about. Even when animals (or we) do not understand what is
attractive about an object, the sensation of an object can still bring about a
desire for it. When desires are more deliberate and self-conscious, when they
follow from the higher faculty of cognition such that we want something because
we understand what it is, then Kant describes such desires as “a faculty to do or to refrain from doing as one pleases”
(6:213). And Kant of course recognizes that when one has a desire, one might
also lack the ability to actually
bring about the end of that desire. A desire, for Kant, always involves a
volitional commitment to an object, but when one is committed to bringing about
the object while still recognizing that one lacks the power to actualize that
commitment, one’s desire is called a mere “wish” (6:213). When one desires an
object and is also aware of one’s physical
[KP23] p[u24] ower
to bring about that object, one “chooses” it (6:213). It should be clear, here,
that “desire” is actually closer to what we consider “choice” than it is to
what we typically consider “desire.” When a person “desires” something in
Kant's sense, it means that they have the sort of mental state that will bring about its object as long as
it can. Thus what we might consider an inactive “desire” would for Kant be
merely an inactive ground for a possible desire. Kant explains, “Concupiscence
(lusting after something) must be distinguished from desire itself, as a
stimulus to determining desire. Concupiscence is always a sensible modification
of the mind but one that has not yet become an act of the faculty of desire”
(6:213).
Beyond this general description of
desire, Kant must explain why it is that desires arise for certain objects and
not others. Generally speaking, the account is fairly simple. Given a cognition
that gives rise to a practical pleasure, one will experience a desire for the
object of that pleasure[KP25] .
The only problem, then is explaining why certain cognitions give rise to
practical pleasures while others do not. Kant's solution to this problem is,
justifiably, extremely complex for human beings. Generally speaking, he
distinguishes between higher and lower faculties of desire based on whether
they are moved by pleasures in higher cognitions (principles informed by
concepts or ideas) or lower cognitions (brute sensations or imagination). But
within these classifications, Kant must explain the variety of forms of human
desire, and he articulates that account in the context of a description of the
biological and environmental factors in defining human beings in general.
4) Human Natural Predispositions
One of the
central claims of Kant's philosophy of biology is his claim that “it
would be absurd . . . to hope that there may yet arise a Newton who could make
comprehensible even the generation of a blade of grass according to natural
laws that no intention had ordered” (5:400). By denying even the hope of a
biological
In
rejecting a “
As Kant's work in the
philosophy of biology develops, this account becomes more nuanced and less
preformationist. In response to Herder’s quasi-epigenesist account according to
which Herder dispenses with anything preformed by positing an “organic power”
that forms matter into living beings, Kant claims to “fully concur” but adds a
“reservation”:
that if the cause organizing itself from within were limited by its nature
only perhaps to a certain number and degree of differences in the formation of
a creature (so that after the institution of which it were not further free to
form yet another type under altered circumstances), then one could call this
natural determination [Naturbestimmung]
of the forming nature also “germs” or “original predispositions,” without
thereby regarding the former as primordially implanted machines and buds that
unfold themselves only when occasioned (as in the system of [preformationism][44]),
but merely as limitations, not further explicable, of a self-forming faculty,
which latter we can just as little explain or make comprehensible. (8:62)
This concession to
Herder makes clear that Kant does not consider himself a traditional
preformationist, including even an outright denial of the language of
“occasioning” outer causes that he used earlier (2:435). But Kant does not
actually withdraw into anything like a traditional epigenesist account of
organisms, and his Critique of Judgment (published
two years after this review) emphasizes that his view still fits into a “system
of generic preformation, since the productive capacity of the progenitor is
still preformed” (5:423). But Kant uses
the increasing complexity of epigenesist to
clarify the primarily epistemic sense
in which he understands his own preformationism. By appealing to
“predispositions” in living beings, Kant does not intend to commit himself to
any particular metaphysical conception of the development of living things.
Instead, his goal is to emphasize an epistemic and methodological shift. Rather
than seeking, as epigenesists often did, to give an account of the emergence of
biological structures from simpler processes – whether Cartesian mechanical
forces or some supposed single kind of organic matter (Buffon) or organic force
(Herder) – Kant points out that our investigation of living beings proceeds
best when we seek to discover the minimal number of predispositions from which
we can explain the variety that we find. Metaphysically, preformationists are
free to consider these predispositions as primordially implanted structures
that unfold, and epigenesists are free to think of them as inexplicable
limitations on the range of new structures that can epigenetically emerge in an
organism. But humans lack the ability to explain basic predispositions in trermsterms
of merely physical mechanisms, so they will also retain an irreducible
epistemic role in the investigation of organic beings.
One corollary of the specifically
epistemic (or regulative) use of predisposition is that Kant’s pessimism about there arising
a finding a
And this gives rise to a further aspect of Kant's biology:[45] as a “heuristic principle for researching the particular laws of nature” (5:411), one can add to the principle of mechanical causation a “principle of final causes” (5:387) “in order to supplement the inadequacy of [mechanical explanation] 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 his biology 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 adopt a biology that explains natural organisms in terms of purposive structures. The predispositions are not further explainable either physically (through mechanist epigenesis) or metaphysically (through divinely ordained preformationism) are susceptible to a scientific, teleological analysis. One can biologically explain why these developmental possibilities and not others are present is through explaining what purpose they serve.
Overall, Kant's epistemic preformationism in biology has several important implications for his empirical anthropology. First, it allows Kant to forego the necessity of providing an account of how human predispositions came into existence. 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). The work of Kant's empirical anthropology, then, will primarily be to reduce given powers to as few natural predispositions as possible, to explain the environmental factors that allow certain predispositions (but not others) to flourish in (certain) human beings, and then to use this small number of natural predispositions to explain what we observe of human beings. Second, Kant's emphasis on teleological explanation of these predispositions gives him additional resources for “explaining” predispositions without mechanistically explaining them.[46] Thus Kant explains that Give e.g.s (7:175) . . . (7:274).
Third, Kant's preformationism contributes to a his general
disinterest in giving materialist explanations of psychological
predispositions. Kant contrasts his own approach to empirical anthropology with
that of Ernst Platner, a doctor and contemporary who developed an anthropology
based on what Kant called “subtle,
and . . . eternally futile inquiries as to the manner in which bodily organs
are connected with thought” (10:145). To some extent, this
disinterest is due to his despair of complete mechanistic accounts of
predispositions and interest in teleological ones. To some extent, it is due to
Kant's pessimism about the state of neuroscience in the 18th
century. Thus Kant refers to the fact that “physicians and physiologists in
general are still not advanced enough to see deeply into the mechanical element
in the human being” (7:214), and he
rejects physiological approaches to mental phenomena largely because one “does
not know the cranial nerves and fibers, nor does he understand how to put them
to use for his purposes” (7:119, see too 7:176). Where doctors have developed
reliable accounts of mental phenomena, Kant is perfectly willing to accept these
(see, e.g., 7:213, 220; 15:943, 947). And Kant
even speculates on his own about chemical processes in “the water of the brain”
that might underlie the processes of “separating and combining given sensory
representations” (12:34). But ultimately[u28] , Kant also has a principled objection to
any attempt to completely reduce mental powers to physical processes, which is
that “the soul can perceive itself only through the inner sense” (12:35),
whereas the physical body is always spatially located[KP29] . Thus, the most that physiological
explanation could ever do it to explain “the matter that makes possible” mental
phenomena. Mental phenomena as such will always have a character that is
irreducible to the physical. Xxx bring in stuff from metahphysics lectures
too.xxx[47]
In sum, Kant's empirical anthropology focuses on the explanation of
diverse mental phenomena in terms of as few basic powers as possible, tracing
these basic powers back to purposive natural predispositions that develop in
the context of environmental influences.
5) Kant's Overall Empirical Account
Kant's account of natural predispositions provides the biological
background for his empirical psychology in that Kant can take basic powers to
be the developed forms of natural predispositions. The account of natural
predispositions also provides a natural means by which Kant can explain the
specific ways in which the faculties of (practical) pleasure and desire
function in human beings. In general, for Kant, natural predispositions (or
basic powers) function as the bases for connections between mental states, the
grounds in the human being for the observed laws covering such connection. As
Kant explains, we “may not at all concoct a
priori basic powers . . . [because] we can only know a basic power through
the relation of a cause to an effect” (8:180).[48] Thus
for any two mental states, we can describe their connection in terms of a
causal law that is grounded in a basic power, which is itself the determinate
unfolding of a natural predisposition.
Mental State 1 à Mental State 2
↑
Actualized Natural Predisposition
But the language of
natural predisposition allows Kant to expand the sense of “basic power” beyond
the limited and abstract structure of his empirical psychology. As we will see,
in the context of the faculties of (practical) pleasure and desire, Kant
develops a vocabulary of natural predispositions that plays the same role as
basic powers but includes the flexibility and variety needed to make sense of
the myriad different ways in which human beings can be motivated to actions.
With respect to the faculty of cognition, Kant’s treatment of natural
predispositions is fairly straightforward. Each cognitive power is the
expression of a distinct natural predisposition. Thus the senses, inner sense,
the imagination, and the higher faculties of judgment, understanding, and
reason are all different natural predisposition in the human being (KrVA66, MS
6:444-5, LA 25:1172, LMxxx 29:915). Humans have natural predispositions to
sense, imagine, and think in accordance with the laws described above. Thus in
explaining the connection between one cognition and another, one appeals to the
natural predispositions active in effecting that transition. For example, the
transition from the thought of one’s dog to the thought of dog food is effected
by the imagination, so one could describe this transition as follows:
Thought of dog à thought of dog-food
↑
Imagination (the predisposition governed by
the law of association)[49]
By contrast, the
transition from the thought of one’s dog to the thought “canine animal” would
be effected by the understanding, hence the relevant predisposition would be
different. In both cases, however, a complete explanation of the origin of a
particular cognition must include, for Kant, not only the prior state that
caused the cognition and the causal law according to which that state caused
that transition, but also the natural predisposition that is the ground of that
law.
In this context, Kant is also able
to offer an empirical response to David Hume’s famous claim that there is no
foundation in reason or the understanding for ideas such as those of causation
or substance. Hume had famously argued that Xxx add a ¶ on Kant's empirical
argument vs. Hume’s empiricism, i.e., certain sensations can cause concepts without
determining the content of them, connect to KrV and last chapter xxx.
As already noted above, there are of course important variations
amongst human beings in terms of the exercise of natural cognitive
predispositions. Some of these are rooted in predispositions themselves, such
as certain forms of mental illness. Others involve a deficiency in the
development of natural predispositions. And others, including all prejudices,
involve circumstances in which some predispositions (linked either to imagination
or to the faculty of desire) override the understanding and reason, leading to
erroneous judgments. There are also positive variations in cognitive powers,
such as wit or originality of thought, which Kant calls calls “talents,” a sort
of “excellence of the cognitive faculty which depends not on instruction but on
the subject’s natural predisposition” (7:220). Altogether, Kant develops an
account of cognitive predispositions that identifies the basic powers of
cognition as predispositions and then accounts for variations in cognitive
abilities through either hereditary or acquired defects in these
predispositions or their expression.
Predispositions become even more important and complex, however, with
respect to the faculty of desire and the practical pleasures related to one’s
desires. As noted in the last section, the causal structure that determines
whether a particular cognition will give rise to a desire or aversion in a
human being can be exceedingly complex. Many things that give rise to desires in
one person do not do so in others, things can give rise to desires sometimes
and not other times, and human beings – even as objects of empirical study –
seem capable of a kind of freedom of choice that might seem to preclude a
naturalistic account. In every case, desires are preceded by cognitions that
provoke feelings of pleasure that in turn provoke desires. But while virtually
all feelings of pleasure cause desires for their objects (the only exceptions
being the special cases of aesthetic pleasures), cognitions can cause pleasure,
displeasure, or no feelings at all. Kant seeks to explain this complex
volitional structure using a set of basic categories of desire, all
fundamentally tied back to two basic kinds of natural predispositions:
instincts (Instinkt) and propensities
(Hang).
The nature and role of instincts is fairly straightforward. Among the
natural predispositions present in human beings are a set of instincts that
ground the connections between various cognitions and the practical pleasures
(or pains) that give rise to desires (or aversions) to the objects of those
cognitions. Given the distinctness between the faculties of feeling and desire,
there would be, strictly speaking, separate predispositions underlying the
connection between, on the one hand, a particular cognition and subsequent
feeling, and, on the other hand, that feeling and its consequent desire. But
because all practical pleasures give rise to desire and Kant has already
offered an account of non-practical desires that explains how they cause
feelings without subsequently generating desires, in his detailed account of
human motivation, Kant does not distinguish between the power that grounds a
connection between cognition and feeling and the power that grounds the
connection between the feeling and desire. Instead, Kant ascribes the
transition from cognition to desire to a single basic natural predisposition.
(For ease of presentation, I sometimes drop the reference to the intermediary
practical feeling in Kant's account and simply describe the role of natural
predispositions as relating cognitions to desires.) In the case of instinct,
Kant’s model of motivation maps straightforwardly onto his account of
predispositions in general.
Cognition à Pleasure à Desire
↑ ↑
Instinct
For example,
Sweet smell of a ripe mango à Pleasure à Desire for that mango
↑
↑
Instinct
for sweet foods
Often, instincts
will become operative when one is in the presence of the object that one’s
instinct predisposes one to desire (or avoid). Kant explains that “little
chicks already have from nature an instinct of aversion to the hawk, of which
they are afraid as soon as they merely see something fly in the air” (28:255).
With respect to human beings, Kant even explains how our sense of smell, by
means of “its affinity with the organ of taste” and “the latter’s familiar
sympathy with the instruments of digestion,” serves as an “instinct” that
“guided the novice . . . allow[ing] him a few things for nourishment but
for[bidding] him others” as though it were a kind of “faculty of pre-sensation
. . . of the suitability of or unsuitability
of a food for gratification” (8:111). Central to these operations of instinct
is that instincts ground connections between cognitions and anticipatory pleasures that give rise to
desires. And these connections occur even before
any experience of pleasures that might follow
from the satisfaction of the desire. In cases where the objects of instincts
are not present, Kant even suggests that instincts can be “directed to an
indeterminate object; they make us acquainted with the object” (25:584). As he
illustrates,
One knows that children, who are hardly born, show an instinct for
nutrition, without knowing what they need, and immediately carry out the art of
the physical law to suckle the breast; if they did not have the instinct, but
one first had to accustom them to this, then many would perish. . . . We can
see that the sexual instinct is a natural instinct by the fact that, even if
they were in the monastery, when [the time of] puberty comes, persons are still
disturbed by the instinct, and feel the need for an object which they do not
yet know. (25:584)
Thus one can have
instincts with definite objects of present awareness, but one can also have
instincts with indeterminate and unknown objects, instincts that agitate to
activity in such a way that one comes into the presence of their objects.
Moreover, the power of imagination can greatly expand the scope of instinct. In his “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human
History,” Kant describes a scene where “a fruit which, because it looked
similar to other available fruits which he had previously tasted, encouraged
him to make the experiment” of eating it (8:111).[50]
Given an association between a particular visual experience and a particular
olfactory experience, a similar visual experience will – by virtue of the laws
that govern the imagination – give rise to an imaginative idea that corresponds
to that olfactory experience. Given a sufficiently strong instinctual
connection between that olfactory experience and practical pleasure, the mere
sight of a similar fruit will give rise to a desire to consume that fruit.
Even with this expanded conception of instinct, however, the vast
majority of human life is not directly governed by instinct, for two important reasons.
First, many of the things that human beings desire are not reducible to
particular instincts. The human desires for the company of one’s friends,
wearing fashionable clothes, resting on comfortable sofas, watching one’s
favorite television programs, attending baseball games, and even for things
like smoking cigarettes and eating fine foods, cannot be explained by appeal to
brute instincts. These are all, in varying degrees, connected with habits that
give rise to desires for certain objects. Second, even when we pursue objects
for which we have instincts, humans typically do not pursue those objects directly from instinct. Our instincts
give rise to what we might call a desire, but then we have a capacity to
reflect on whether or not to pursue the object of that desire. And often one
decides not to follow through on an instinct for the sake of something else,
often something for which one does not have a particularly strong instinctual
desire at that moment. When I decide not to eat that delicious mango because I
know that it will make me sick later, I do not act from any instinctual desire
for long term health. If humans merely acted from instinct, the task of
explaining human motivation would merely require a catalog of the relevant
instincts and a careful description of the environment in which those instincts
play out. But human behavior is, as Kant recognized, much harder to explain.
One might be tempted, at this point,
to appeal to human freedom as a reason for the difficulty of explaining human
behavior. And many have thought that the complexity of human motivation
provides some support for Kant’s account of freedom.[51] But
within his empirical anthropology, Kant takes the complexity of human action not as a reason to posit any kind of
transcendental human freedom, but rather as a basis for a much more complicated
but still wholly empirical
anthropology. Kant adds the requisite complexity through a generous use of the
category of a “propensity.” In one lecture, Kant defines a propensity as a
“natural predisposition” that provides “the inner possibility of an
inclination” (25:1111-2; cf. 7:265, 25:1517). More generally, a propensity is a
natural predisposition that does not itself provide a ground for connections
between cognitions and practical pleasures (and thereby desires), but that
makes it possible for the human being, in the context of environmental factors,
to develop a ground for such connections. Having introduced this notion of a propensity,
Kant puts it to use to address the two problems mentioned in the previous
paragraph.
First, Kant focuses on human propensities for “inclinations,” which
Kant identifies as “habitual grounds of desire” (25:1114) and which, for the
purposes of his empirical anthropology, are distinguished from instincts.[52][53] Like
instincts, inclinations provide bases for connections between cognitions and
desires. Unlike instincts, however, inclinations are not natural
predispositions but rather are tendencies that are brought about in human
beings through certain experiences. For example,
[A]ll savages have
a propensity for intoxicants; for although many of them have no acquaintance at
all with intoxication, and hence absolutely no desire for the things that
produce it, let them try these things but once, and there is aroused in them an
almost inextinguishable desire for them. (6:29; cf. 25:1112, 1339, 1518)[54]
In some cases, one
needs only a single experience of an object for an inclination to be awakened.
Generally, however, inclinations require “frequent repetition” (25:1514) to
develop the kind of habit for it that can ground future desires. Kant even
seems to suggest that there is a sort of propensity to develop habits, such
that when one experiences something consistent over a long period of time, one
develops an inclination for it (cf. 9:xxx pedagogy). In any case of
inclination, however, it is not enough to simply have exposure to something to
develop an inclination for it. Experiences give rise only to inclinations when human
beings already have requisite propensities. The model for explaining human
action in those cases looks like:
Sensory cognition à
Feeling/Desire
(sight or smell of strong drink) (desire to consume the drink)
↑
Past experience
(with strong drink) à Inclination (for strong drink)
↑
Propensity
(for strong drink[KP30] )
In these cases, the
immediate explanation for why a particular cognition gives rise to a practical
pleasure and thereby a desire will be similar to the case of instinct, but
because inclinations are not themselves innate, the account requires an extra
level of complexity. And this complexity provides for much of the richness and
diversity that one finds in human desires. Fancy clothes, comfortable sofas,
cigarettes, and baseball are all possible objects of inclination, even when we
have no instinctual need for them.
And because humans differ in their experiences, even those with the same
propensities (and Kant allows for some, but not much, variation in basic human
propensities) will end up with very different patterns of desire. Because
propensities are natural predispositions, Kant does not need to give a specific
mechanical account for them, but he does aim to reduce the number of posited
propensities to as few as possible, and ideally he would seek to provide
teleological explanations for each propensity.
Moreover, Kant suggests that the
cultivation of inclination generally involves pleasure in way that goes beyond
mere instinct. For both instincts and inclination, the experience of the object
of one’s desire will bring with it a subsequent pleasure that must be
distinguished from the practical pleasure that causes the desire. In the case
of instincts, however, this subsequent pleasure plays no explanatory role in
the development of the instinct. The instincts for nursing or for sex motivate
human beings to seek milk or sex not merely because one has experienced their
pleasures already. Instincts are pre-sensations
(8:111) of pleasure. But in the case of inclinations, the anticipatory
practical pleasure that gives rise to desires generally follows from past experiences of the pleasure that
one experiences when one attains the objects of desire. One accidentally
experiences some object, gets pleasure from the experience, and thus forms an
inclination that grounds future connections between the cognition of that
object and the desire to experience it. One might taste an intoxicating
beverage out of thirst (rather than a desire for intoxicants), for example, or
might literally fall into a pleasantly cool pool of water on a hot day. When
the experience of such objects brings pleasure, one will seek intoxicating
beverages even when one is not thirsty, or one will deliberately seek out and
immerse oneself in cool pools of water. In these cases, we might specify the
past experience as past experience of
pleasure in the objects. Of course, one need not always experience pleasure in order to form an inclination. One who
has started smoking can find herself craving cigarettes even while the actual
experience of smoking is still generally unpleasant, and one who develops a
habit of acting in a particular way can develop an inclination to continue
acting in that way, even if it is not, in itself, particularly pleasurable.
(For this reason, Kant recommends that parents not accustom their children to
particular xxx, xxx, or xxx, lest they develop habits that are hard to break.)
The addition of inclinations to Kant's account of human motivation
greatly enriches that account, and it makes it possible to explain why there is
such a wide range of divergent human interests. But inclinations, like
instincts, still do not seem to involve the kind of reflective desires that characterize much of human action. Kant captures
this limitation by ascribing both instinct and inclination to the “lower”
faculty of desire. Both affect human beings insofar as we are motivated by
sensory or imaginative mental states, but not insofar as we govern our actions
by means of concepts and principles. To make sense of these kinds of desires, to which Kant assigns the term “choice”
(6:213, xxx, xxx), Kant appeals to yet another propensity, a propensity to what
he calls “character.”
Kant uses the term character in several senses throughout his writings.
In the broadest sense, the character of a thing is the “law of its causality,
without which it would not be a cause at all,” such that “every effective
cause must have a character” (A539/B567, cf. 25:634).[55] In
this sense, gravity reflects the “character” of matter, and one’s instincts are
part of the “character” of one’s lower faculty of desire. In a quite different sense, Kant uses
“character,” in the context of one’s “intelligible character,” to refer to the
free ground – “which is not itself appearance” – of one’s appearances in the
world (A539/B567). Character in this
sense has no role to play in empirical explanations of action, although Kant
will end up arguing that this intelligible character grounds the empirical
character of the higher faculty of desire.[56] The character that plays an important role in
Kant’s empirical theory of the higher faculty of desire is distinct from though
grounded in intelligible character, and more specific than the character of an
efficient cause in general. Kant defines this sense of character as “that
property of the will by which the subject has tied himself to certain practical
principles” (7:292) or “a certain subjective rule of the higher faculty of
desire” (25:438[57]),
and this sense of character plays the same role for the higher faculty of
desire that instincts and inclinations play for the lower.[58] As
Kant explains, “the man of principles, from whom we know for sure what to
expect, not from his instinct, for example, but from his will, has character”
(7:285, cf. 25:1514). One can describe such motivations as follows:
Cognition (of a principle for action) à
Pleasure/Desire
↑
Character
“Character” is a
matter of commitment to various
principles (cf. xxx), or “maxims” of action.[59]
Thus, one may have a commitment to the principle “early to bed, early to
rise.” In such a case, one’s actions
might be explained as follows:
“Early to bed…” à Desire to go
to bed
↑
Fixed commitment to
“Early to bed, early to rise”
Of course, this example is too simple in
several respects. For one thing, the
cognition of the principle “Early to bed, early to rise” is not in itself sufficient
to generate the desire to go to bed, since one must also have some awareness of
the fact that it is early evening – time for bed – rather than early morning –
time to rise. One’s perception of one’s situation – the sky is growing darker,
the clock says 9 PM, etc – brings to mind the relevant principle,[60] and
one’s character ensures that the principle will be efficacious in generating
its corresponding action.
Moreover, one’s commitment to the
principle “early to bed, early to rise” is itself the result of other causes.
In particular, Kant needs an account of the causes of character as such, that is, the ability to act in
accordance with principles at all; and he also needs an account of the origins
of the particular principles upon which individuals act. With respect to the
first point, Kant's account of character development is similar to his account
of the development of inclinations. There is a “propensity to character”
(25:1172, cf. 25:651, 823, 1176) that is
actualized by various experiences (cf. 25:1172; cf. 7:294), such that one might
have the propensity but lack character, just as one might have a propensity to
intoxicants but never develop the inclination. In the case of character,
however, habit does not play a role in its formation.[61]
Instead, Kant emphasizes the role of education (25:1172), examples (7:294), and
“moral discourses” (25:1173n1, cf. too 9: xxx pedagogy xxx), and he gives
specific recommendations regarding the kinds
of education that are most effective, such as education that avoids
“imitation” (25:635, cf. 7:325; 5:154; 25:599, 722ff., 1386). Beyond these
direct influences, Kant suggests that oblique factors can play a powerful role
in character cultivation, such as stable and just political regimes, peace, and
even progress in the arts and sciences. He even suggests that politeness
cultivates character by combating passions and promoting self-control.[62] And
finally, Kant points out that other natural predispositions (especially
temperament, which I discuss in more detail in chapter six) can facilitate the
development of character (cf. 7:285, 290; 25:1388). All of these elements work
together to develop what is a mere propensity into an active ability to govern
oneself according to conscious principles rather than reactive instincts and
inclinations.
Many
of the influences responsible for the development of character as such also
contribute to the development of the specific principles by which one acts, but
Kant also emphasizes that most of these principles are only “intellectual . . .
in some respect <secundum quid>” because they “rest on
sensibility, and . . . merely the means for arriving at the end are presented
by the understanding” (28:589). For example, the principle above – “early to
bed . . .” – is likely a principle that one learns through instruction, but
this instruction is effective because it proposes plausible principles for
satisfying one’s instincts and inclinations. Even in the absence of specific
instruction, in fact, one is capable of understanding the nature of the world,
and one can thereby form principles of action based on what sorts of action
will best promote one’s instincts and inclinations. Such principles will be
intellectual (rather than sensible) causes of desire, but they still “rest on
sensibility” because one formulates them only in the context of the
inclinations and instincts that govern one’s lower faculty of desire. And [KP31] Kant
thinks that generally even actions that might be described as following “from
inclination” are really grounded in a character committed to principles that make the objects of
inclination its ends.[63] Generally
it is not the case that my inclination for sweet food directly causes me to eat it; rather, I understand that eating this food will satisfy my felt inclination,
and (because of my character) this thought causes me to eat it.
Most
human actions, motivated by these kinds of “impure” principles of character,
can be explained only by an extremely complicated motivational picture. First,
sensory data get transformed into an understanding of one’s situation based on
concepts due to the operation of natural higher cognitive powers. This
understanding then gives rise to the thought of one of more practical
principles based on the details of one’s understanding of one’s situation as
well as of one’s instincts and inclinations. Thus one who recognizes the
darkening sky under the concept of “early evening” might be led to think of the
principle “early to bed…” by virtue of understanding this as the time at which
going to bed will best facilitate the satisfaction of various inclinations over
the long term. These practical principles give rise to practical pleasures and
thereby desires – which Kant, in these cases, calls “choices” – by means of
one’s character. This character in general is formed through education,
social-cultural influences, and one’s own past behavior, and the way in which
particular thoughts of principles give rise to practical pleasures is
determined by the details of these character-forming influences as well as by the
cooperating or hindering influence of inclinations (which are themselves formed
by past experiences) and instincts. Both character in general and the
inclinations that largely determine the content of the principles on which one
acts are grounded in natural propensities The result is that human beings, due
partly to different natural propensities but largely to different past
experiences, will be motivated by similar sensory data to behave in radically
different ways.
As complicated as this picture is,
Kant thinks that human motivation is even more
complicated, for three important reasons. First, the account given above
assumes that for any given set of sensory data, there is only one way in which
one’s natural powers can conceptualize that content and, more importantly, that
this conceptualization only lends itself to a single practical principle. But
it might well be that the recognition of the darkening sky is conjoined with a
recollection of an invitation to a social gathering that promises to be particularly
enjoyable. Here one may be led to think of the principle “early to bed, early
to rise” but also the principle “don’t forgo opportunities for enjoyable social
gatherings” (cf. 6:473, 7:277-82), when one cannot in fact act in ways that
follow from both practical principles. In such cases, even one with a
well-formed character will have conflicting possible grounds of action. One’s
character could enable the former principle to give rise to a practical
pleasure that would motivate one to stay home, or it could enable the latter
principle to give rise to a practical pleasure that would motivate one to go out[KP32] .
From the inside-out standpoint of practical reflection, of course, what one
does is a matter of free choice. But from the standpoint of empirical
psychology, it requires a psychological explanation. Kant first insists that
“in empirical psychology, wholly equal incentives cannot be thought” (28:678;
cf. 25:278) because in the case of equal incentives, there would be no choice
and thus no action (29:902). As a result, one can distinguish between what Kant
calls “living” and “dead” underlying grounds (or powers). Even when one has
only a “dead” ground, however, one might still be left with something like a desire, with what Kant calls a “wish[u33] ,”
where the “ground determining one to action . . . is [not] joined with one’s
consciousness of the ability to bring about its object” (6:213), given one’s
pursuit of one’s other ends. Thus one goes to bed because one’s overall
character subordinates the principle of socialization with the principle of
prudent rest, but one falls to sleep wishing that one could somehow both go to bed early and partake in the enjoyable party.
The second
added complication to this account of choice is that although strictly speaking
character requires commitment to act from consistent
principles, very few human beings have character in this fully developed sense.
Kant specifically mentions the difficulty that one might have with the
practical maxim “early to bed, early to rise” in one his lectures:
who is not steadfast in this, often lays hold of a resolve, for which
he knows for sure that nothing will come of it, because he knows that he has
already often broken resolutions. Then the human being is in his [own] eyes a
wind-bag. He no longer has any confidence in himself; from this arises
hopelessness . . . This is how it is with things for which one wants to break
one’s habit of doing them, for example, sleeping in; then it is always said,
just this one time more, but then no more, and thus one again philosophizes
oneself free of one’s plan . . . one must seek to keep one’s word to oneself
just as conscientiously as to others. From this arises a firm confidence in
ourselves. Who knows how to manage himself so that he can be content with
himself, is steadfast. (25:624)
Of course, in some
cases of acting against one’s principles, inclinations directly overpower one’s
higher faculty of desire, such that one will, in the strict sense, act on the
basis of inclination alone, without the reflection that characterizes choice.
Such cases will be quite rare, but in such cases, one’s higher faculty of
desire as a whole is the sort of “dead” power described in the last paragraph.
More often, one’s inclination corrupts the grounds of one’s choice, as here,
where one “philosophizes oneself free of one’s plan.” And for Kant, this
tendency is quite common. Kant claims that character in this strict sense “is
fixed very late” or “comes at a ripe old age” (25:654, 1385, cf. 7: 294). Most
people have a kind of “bad character” (schlechte Character; 25:650,
1172) or “flawed character” (25:1172). Here “character” refers to a “constitution
of these higher powers” (25:227) according to which, rather than acting on the
basis of fixed principles, one allows the principles on the basis of which one
chooses to vary depending on the particular configuration of inclinations
present at the time of choice. In these cases, inclinations and instincts not
only affect the practical principles to which one commits oneself in general but also determine whether
and to what extent various practical principles play a role in one’s
deliberation at a particular moment. Thus, one who has a firmly established
character will decide, on the basis of an assessment of the impact of various
principles on her life as a whole, how to prioritize various practical
principles. When the time comes for action, which practical principles are
living and which are dead will be determined by this prioritization. One who
lacks character might similarly establish a ranking of practical principles
(resolving, for instance, to prioritize getting an early start on one’s day
over satisfying the inclination to rest by sleeping in), but the inclinations
of the moment, rather than this resolution, will determine which practical
principle becomes the basis for choice.
The
final added component of Kant's account is by far the most important. Kant
thinks that human beings are capable not only of “impure” principles of action
that are ““intellectual . . . in some respect,” but also of purely intellectual principles of
action. In particular, human beings have a “predisposition to the good” (xxx),
a “moral predisposition” (xxx) that gives rise to a principle that is “purely
intellectual without qualification” because it is an “impelling cause” that “is
represented by the pure understanding” (28:589). A purely intellectual
principle is not based in any way on one’s instincts or inclinations but
proceeds solely from practical reason itself. In chapter three, we saw the
importance from the standpoint of transcendental anthropology (moral
philosophy) of the possibility of an “autonomous” moral law, a principle
governing human actions that does not require appeal to inclination for its justification. Within Kant's psychology,
the nature of pure practical principles is somewhat different, as a principle
of the higher faculty of desire that does not require positing any particular
instincts or inclinations as factors in its explanation.
In chapter three, however, we noted that Kant's account of the free
finitude of human beings requires some account of how the moral law can motivate human beings that are objects of
empirical description. Kant's empirical anthropology in general provides the
basic biological-psychological background for such an account. Like other basic
powers/predispositions, the predisposition to the good can simply be posited in
human nature. Like instincts, Kant suggests that this predisposition is innate
in human beings: “xxx” (xxx, cf. xxx). But like all predispositions of the
faculty of desire (including instincts), other experiential factors determine
the extent to which the moral predisposition is living and efficacious or
amounts to a mere wish. Thus Kant points out that xxx quote re: causing good, e.g.
of moral education, politeness, moral community in religion.
From the standpoint of the environmental and predispositional bases of
moral motivation, Kant's account of moral motivation thus fits well into his
general empirical anthropology. Because of the importance of moral motivation
for his transcendental anthropology, however, and especially the importance of
making sense of how a finite, empirically situated being can be motivated by a
pure moral law, Kant adds detailed specific accounts of the nature of the
“feeling of respect” that serves as the anticipatory “pleasure” causing choice
in accordance with the moral law.
Kant's account of respect for the moral law is notoriously difficult to
interpret. On the one hand, Kant says that “no feeling” (xx). But only a
paragraph later, he describes “feeling xxx.” Understandably, readers of Kant
are largely split into those that favor a “cognitivist” reading and those that
favor a “sentimentalist” xxx.
Given that Kant posits both a transcendental and an empirical
anthropology, of course, it is understandable that he might give different
accounts of the role of pleasure in moral motivation. From the inside-out
standpoint of transcendental anthropology, pleasure cannot play any role in
grounding decisions to act in accordance with the moral law. If I choose to do
what is right because it is (or will be) pleasurable, I do not choose
autonomously, and hence do not really choose to do what is right. Xxx
Theoretically, then, there is no reason that Kant cannot insist upon
the absence of pleasure as a motive from the standpoint of practical
deliberation while incorporating moral motivation into his more general
empirical psychology such that the thought of the pure moral principle gives
rise to a desire and thereby an action by means of pleasure. In his lectures on
empirical psychology, Kant even talks about an “intellectual pleasure” xxx. And
much of Kant's account of respect seems to fit with this general account: xxx,
xxx.
But Kant also worries about subsuming his account of moral motivation too
closely withunder his account of motivation in
general. Part of the reason for this may be concerns about the way in which
transcendental and empirical anthropology relate. It can just seem odd to say
that one is motivated by a purely moral principle but only by means of a
pleasure one takes in it, and even if one reserves this for the level of
empirical explanation, it can seem to make moral motivation too hedonistic. But
part of the reason also seems to be strictly empirical. Whereas ordinary
desires for objects seem to motivate by means of pleasure, and one can even see
impure practical principles as motivating in this way, the moral law just seems
to motivate more directly, without bringing any pleasure in any traditional sense. Thus Kant suggests that “xxx not
a real feeling just a moving aside”.
xxxKant's response to the first problem involves an account of “in what
way the moral law becomes an incentive and, inasmuch as it is, what happens to
the human faculty of desire as an effect of that determining ground upon it”
(5:72). In other words, insofar as the moral law determines one’s free choice,
what are the effects of this determination on the empirically observable
faculty of desire? Kant's short answer is that motivation by the moral law
appears in an agent’s empirical psychology as feeling of “respect” for the
moral law (4: xxx, 5: 72f.). A full explanation
respect is “nothing
other than the sensation of the determinability of the will through reason
itself, thus not a special feeling and distinctive receptivity that requires a
special section under the properties of the mind” (20:207)
6) Conclusion
Insofar as they are objects of
empirical study, human beings are biological beings with complex mental lives.
As biological beings, we have various predispositions that are best discussed
in terms of the ends that they serve, and these predispositions provide the
grounds for the causal laws that determine how our environment shapes our
cognitions, feelings, and desires. Xxx We are unique among biological beings in
having higher faculties of cognition (true?) and in being historical xxx.
Even in terms of empirical
psychology, Kant made important contributions to the empirical account of human
beings. Vs. Wolff re: one-faculty. Vs.
Hume re: reason xxx. (Build more of this back in xxx)
[1] There are four key aspects of
Kant’s empirical account of the human being. First, as we saw in chapter two,
one crucial issue in the development of empirical psychology in the second half
of the 18th century was the structure of the human mind. Whereas
Wolff had sought to reduce all human mental states to the single category of
“representation” and all capacities to a single “xxx capacity for
representation,” there was an increasing sense that this reduction obscured
essential differences between, for example, volition and cognition. In this
context, Kant developed his own elaborate faculty psychology, defending a
three-fold set of faculties each of which could be further subdivided into
irreducibly distinct mental powers. Second, Kant overlaid onto his discussion
of human mental powers an account of various causal laws that govern those
powers and their relations. For Kant, “the concept of cause lies in the concept
of power” (28:564),[1] so the
elucidation of different mental powers provides the framework for a discussion
of the causal laws that govern those powers. Third, Kant entered into 18th
century debates within biology and embryology about the extent to which various
human (mental) tendencies and capacities are innate or acquired. In that context,
Kant developed an account of the human being rooted in the presence of various
“germs” (Keime) and “predispositions”
(Anlagen) that could be cultivated in
different ways depending on human’s context. The way in which these germs and
predispositions develop determines, in large part, the way in which human
mental powers operate. Fourth, this account of predispositions (and germs)
provided a background for an account of human history and human differences. In that context, Kant entered into a
growing interest within the 18th century in thinking of the human
being as a fundamentally historical
being. Herder, one of Kant’s students and an
eventual philosophical rival, explained that “xxx.” And Kant himself pointed
out that “xxxhuman progress as a species and in history xxx.”
[2] Throughout
this paper, reference to Kant are to the Academy Edition of Kant’s works or to
the standard A and B editions of the Critique of Pure Reason. For English translations, I have made
extensive use of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant,
where available, and of translations of the Anthropology by Victor Lyle
Dowdell (Southern Illinois University Press: 1978), Mary Gregor (Martinus
Nijhoff: 1974), and Robert Louden (Cambridge University Press: forthcoming).
[3] In a lecture on metaphysics, Kant reiterates
this, making clear that “nature” here refers not simply to the realm of outer
sense – bodies – but to inner sense – the mind – as well: “All things in
nature, be they inner or outer events, have their determining cause, they all
happen according to natural laws and are also determined according to them”
(28:582). Working out the precise
relationship between inner and outer events is beyond the scope of this paper,
although it would have important implications for the extent to which Kant
allows reductionism with respect to mental events. For my purposes, I focus on showing Kant has
a causal account of mental events.
Whether this is in principle reducible to a physical account is beyond
the scope of this paper.
[4] Cf. Allison.
[5] Cf. Reath, Baron.
[6] Cf. wood, louden.
[7] In the Critique of Judgment, Kant even
explicitly distinguishes these two kinds of universality: “Here it is
understood that the universality [Allgemeinheit] is only comparative, so
that the rules are only general [generale] (as all empirical
rules are), not universal [universale]” (5: 213). Allgemein is the term generally
translated “universal” in Kant’s writings, and in particular is the term used
to describe the “universality” of radical evil in the Religion (6:
29). In the Anthropology as well, Kant is careful to use Generalkenntnis
to describe the “universal” knowledge involved in anthropology (7:120). In both cases, the knowledge at issue is
universal only in the comparative sense.
As Kant insists concerning radical evil (which we will discuss in detail
in the next chapter), “there is no cause for exempting anyone from it” (6:25),
but this universality is merely contingent (6:29).
[8] Cf. Wood 1999: 198.
[9] E.g. Gouax 1972, Westphal xxx.
[10] See Frierson xxx, Hatfield (1990, 1992), and
Sturm (2001) for more defense xxx.
[11] Quote goes on:
“Strictly speaking,
human beings are sooner worth the effort to be studied, and that they are given
their due by such considerations, than the entire physical nature. One believed
there to be too little to be said about this in a science; hence one inserted
it into metaphysics, and in fact into psychology, which constitutes empirical
psychology, where it does not belong at all, in that metaphysics has nothing to
do with any empirical sciences.”
As Marcia Baron puts it, “
She goes on:
This [causal picture of agency] is a familiar picture of
agency from the empiricist tradition. Kant’s theory of agency is very
different. Our actions are not the
result of a desire or some other incentive that impels us. An incentive can move us to act only if we
let it. (Baron 1995: 189)
[13] Cf. too Baron 1995:189, Westphal 357-8, and even
Wood (2003: 50).
[14] Footnote
re: the sense in which empiricists buy incorporation thesis (e.g. Locke on
reflective distance) and Hume on calm passions xxx.
[15] As we will see, there are important differences
between Kant’s empirical psychology and standard empiricist accounts, and some
of these differences make Kant’s empirical psychology particularly well suited
to fit with his transcendental accounts of freedom, but Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason provides a framework for reconciling transcendental freedom
with any empirical description of human actions. For further discussion of this claim, see Frierson
(under review).
[16] Footnote on evaluation . . . note that evaluation
is a kind of sympathetic deliberation xxx.
[17] . Sometimes this variation in behavior is
involuntary; often it is voluntary. Human beings are particularly adept at
deception and dissembling (cf. 25:857-9, 25:1197). And even with respect to self-observation, Kant points out that
human beings are adept at self-deception and not particularly attuned to
incentives that might prove unflattering (G xxx, Rel xxx, Anth 7:133).
[18] . When one is overcome with anger, for example,
it is impossible to actually observe the nature of that anger because anger
prevents the calm interest and introspective attention involved in self-study.
And when the anger has passed, one can no longer see – and cannot accurately
remember – what the anger looks like in action.
In addition to these
epistemic challenges with knowledge of human beings, Kant suggests that
introspection can actually have dangerous effects on one’s psychological
health, so that even if one could
gather the relevant data, it might not be worth the cost. (25:252, 477-8, 863-5, xxx).
[20] Kant also includes such authors as Samuel
Richardson, Moliere, the English Spectator (by Allison and Steele), xxx. For
references to literature as a source of anthropology, see 7: 221, 25:473, Add
refs and more literature.
[21] For more
discussion, cf. Frierson 2003: xxx.
[22] Cf too
“philosophers who
otherwise deserve nothing but praise . . . have sought to explain this
distinction as merely illusory and to reduce all faculties to the mere faculty
of cognition. But it can easily be demonstrated . . . that this attempt to
bring unity into the multiplicity of faculties, although undertake in a
genuinely philosophical spirit, is futile. For there is always a great difference
between representations belonging to cognition, insofar as they are related
merely to the object and the unity of the consciousness of it, and their
objective relation where, considered as at the same time the cause of the
relatiy of this object, they are assigned to the faculty of desire, and,
finally, their relation merely to the subject, where theyare considered merely
as grounds for preserving their own existence in it and to this extent in
relation to the feeling of pleasure; the latter is absolutely not a cognition,
nor does it provide one, althoguht ot be sure it may presuppose such a
cognition as a determining ground” (20:206, KU, 1st intro).
[23] Cf. Crusius 1745, §§ 73 and 444; Watkins 2005:
91; Hatfield 1990.
[24] In some
cases, Kant associates the spontaneity of the higher faculty with that
transcendental freedom that is a condition of possibility of moral
responsibility, but in his empirical psychology, Kant generally uses the terms
“self-activity” or “spontaneity” to describe an empirical or comparative freedom
of the higher faculties, a freedom that is consistent with the view that even
those higher faculties are causally determined. Strictly speaking, describing
the higher faculty of desire as free in that sense is inconsistent with empirical
psychology. Insofar as one studies human
action empirically, such action is, as Kant insists in his first Critique,
causally necessitated in accordance with natural laws. But Kant does hold that the presence of a
higher faculty of desire is an indication of moral responsibility and
hence transcendental freedom. (See
Frierson, “Kant’s Empirical Account of Human Action” and “Kant’s Empirical
Markers of Moral Responsibility”) Thus
he sometimes slips into these properly transcendental discussions in lectures
on empirical psychology. This effort to
discuss the Critical philosophy in lectures on empirical psychology is not
particularly surprising, of course. As a
teacher, Kant found an opportunity within the syllabus prescribed by
Baumgarten’s text for explaining some of Kant’s own more important
philosophical ideas, a temptation to which he can hardly be blamed for
succumbing.
[25] Cf. 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.
[26] Here I focus on Kant’s account of the higher and
lower faculties of desire, as these are tied to action most directly, but most
of Kant’s account of higher and lower desire applies to feeling as well,
although, as already noted, Kant’s account of the difference between higher and
lower faculties of feeling is complicated by his efforts to distinguish between
intellectual and sensible feelings for moral purposes.
[27] Kant makes the same claim in the context of
pleasure, but there Kant is careful to insist that while there is still a lower
and higher faculty of pleasure, all pleasure is sensitive in itself
(hence lower).
[28] Here again (recall footnote 50)., Kant leaves
open the metaphysical possibility that “the unity of each substance requires
that there be only one basic power” (29:822).
[29] Xxx revise footnote (or just cut it?)( xxx from
British empiricism Kant adopted the practice of explaining each power in terms
of laws describing regular connections between phenomena. Unlike many of the
British empiricists, Kant does not focus on laying out causal laws and
applying them to understand various mental phenomena. Kant’s focus is on the
framework of basic powers that will ground those causal laws. And Kant allows a
greater plurality of basic powers than most empiricists. Moreover, because these laws are rooted in
basic powers, they reflect necessary connections between different phenomenal
states, rather than mere regularities. Most importantly, Kant differs from
empiricists in that he does not think that an empirical account of basic powers
provides any basis for epistemology or ethics.
In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant insists that although “as
far as time is concerned . . ., every cognition begins with experience,”
nonetheless “it does not all on that account arise from experience” (B
1-2, cf. 29: 951-2). In a similar way,
Kant argues that his empirical account of human action does not imply that
ethical norms can be derived from this account.
But when Kant does describe the laws governing the basic powers, his
laws are similar to those of the empiricists, including a “law of association”
governing the imagination and various laws of logic and prejudice governing the
understanding.
[30] This account of human action is identical for
animal action. Like humans, other
animals have cognitions, feelings, and desires.
Kant even describes animals as having “choice [Willkühr]” (cf.
6:213, 28:588, 29:1015). The difference
between humans and animals is that humans have a “higher” faculty of cognition,
and hence of desire, and this gives humans a kind of empirical freedom than
animals lack. This shows that at least
Kant’s general picture of human action does not imply any transcendental
freedom. Kant nowhere suggests that
animals have transcendental freedom, so insofar as they are motivated by
similar structures as human beings, there is nothing “free” about these
structures in themselves.
[31] Xxx Include any of this in text (or note)???::
Insofar as a
representation is the ground of an action that brings about some state of
affairs, it is a desire: “the faculty of the soul for becoming cause of the
actuality of the object through the representation of the object itself = . . .
the faculty of desire” (29:1012, cf. 6: 211, 399; 7:251). An “object” here is not necessarily a
physical object but anything that can be desired, including physical objects
but also states of affairs.[31] The object
of desire is a possible purpose for an action, and desires, for Kant, naturally
give rise to actions. As Kant puts it
here, a desire is defined as a representation that leads to action, that
“becomes cause of the actuality of an object.”[31] And when desire is taken in this sense, there
are no actions that are not preceded by and caused by desires, and no desires
that do not lead to actions (at least in the absence of external impediments).[31]
[32] Xxx edit xxx add ref to conflicts of desires xxx
Because desires simply are representations insofar as those representations are
directed towards action, Kant’s notion of desire is more closely connected to
choice and action than the customary English sense of desire, whereby one can
desire something without actually pursuing it.
Once one has a desire in this general sense, one is committed to action,
and action follows necessarily in the absence of unforeseen hindrances. One might, for example, desire a mango and then
find oneself unable to climb the tree, but one’s representation will not count
as a desire unless it prompts one to action.
In contrast to customary English usage, for Kant desires mark an end to
deliberation, not factors taken into account in deliberation.
Cf. 20:230n re:
wishes.xxx
[33] Xxx Cut and revise this stuff to make this a good
footnote just about the problematic issue of pleasure always preceding desire,
and action always flowing from desire. Xxxx
Similarly, the connection between feeling and desire is,
for Kant, a very close one. In his
empirical psychology, Kant usually emphasizes this tight connection between
feeling and desire, pointing out that “the cognitive faculty is connected with
the faculty of desire by the feeling of pleasure or displeasure” (29:890) or
that the feeling of “satisfaction with the actuality of the object is desire”
(25:577; cf. 7:230-1, 25: 1514).[33] He insists,
The faculty of desire rests on the principle: I desire
nothing but what pleases, and avoid nothing but what displeases . . . . But
representations cannot be the cause of an object where we have no pleasure or
displeasure in it. This is therefore the
subjective condition by which alone a representation can become the cause of an
object. (29:894)[33]
In these
lectures, the cognition–feeling–desire model of motivation seems to be
universal, and Kant even applies this model explicitly to the case of
motivation by reason. He explains,
[F]reedom is the faculty for choosing that which is good
in itself and not merely good as a means.
Thus we are free when we arrange out actions entirely according to the
laws of the understanding and of reason, and the more we do this, the freer we
are, for even if the will is free from stimuli, it can still be not entirely
free. For since we desire merely that
which pleases us, pleasure is the cause of our desiring. But the cause of the pleasure is either
sensibility or understanding . . . .
Understanding and reason give laws to the will according to which it
must conform if it is to be free. But we
cannot be determined by mere representations of reason; it must also give us
incentives. (29:899-900; cf. 19:185-6, R6866; 28:253-4).
Here
Kant holds firm to his cognition–pleasure–desire model, pointing out only that
there are two very different kinds of pleasure, depending upon whether those
pleasures are caused by sensible or intellectual cognitions. Elsewhere Kant makes a similar point, and he
develops a vocabulary for distinguishing between the general genus of feeling
that is a cause of any sort of desire and the narrower sort of feeling that is
purely sensible:
The cognitive faculty is connected with the faculty of
desire by the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The author calls it pleasure
<voluptas> and dipleasure <taedium>. That is false, for this is true only of
sensible satisfaction. – For the
understanding can frequently find dissatisfaction with that which best
satisfies the senses. This should be
named the faculty of satisfaction and dissatisfaction.” (29:890, cf. 28:674-5,
29:1013)
In the context of
his empirical psychology, Kant generally posits a feeling of satisfaction [Wohlgefallen]
or dissatisfaction [Mißgefallen] as a cause of any desire, allowing that
these feelings can be either caused by sensibility (in which case they are
properly called pleasures [Lust] or displeasures [Unlust]) or by
the understanding.
In the context of his moral
philosophy, however, Kant sometimes suggests that no feeling of any sort
precedes purely moral volitions. Some of
the strongest language here is from the second Critique, where Kant
says,
What
is essential to any moral worth of actions is that the moral law determine
the will immediately. If the
determination of the will takes place conformably with the law but only
by means of a feeling, of whatever kind, that has to be presupposed in order
for the law to become a sufficient determining ground of the will, so that the
action is not done for the sake of the law, then the action will contain
legality indeed but not morality.
(5:71-2, cf. 4:401n, 5:9n, 6:212, 29:1024)
One way
to read this passage is as an exception to Kant’s cognition–feeling–desire
model of motivation. On this reading,
feelings would precede desires only for the cases of non-moral motivation. In the case of motivation by the moral law,
the relevant feelings would follow the determination of one’s faculty of
desire.
A full discussion of these passages would require a
detailed treatment of the feeling of respect for the moral law, which is beyond
the scope of the present essay.[33] However, it is worth noting that there is
another way to read these passages, one that is consistent with Kant’s general
model of human motivation. The key to
reconciling this passage with Kant’s general cognition–feeling–desire model of motivation
is to focus on the claim that feeling cannot play a role as an antecedent
“determining ground of the will,”[33]
and to read this restriction as one that applies not to empirical descriptions
of choice, but to one’s deliberative bases for choice. That is, in the case of motivation by the
moral law, one does not appeal to pleasure as a determining ground of one’s
choice, but simply to the law as such.
In non-moral motivation, one appeals in deliberation, either directly or
indirectly, to the pleasure that one takes in the object of one’s choice. In moral motivation, one makes no such appeal
to pleasure. This would be compatible,
of course, with saying that pleasure plays a role in a psychological account of
choice, as a connecting psychological state between cognition of the moral law
and one’s desire. Here the thought of
the moral law in all its purity (hence not mixed with any considerations of
pleasure) causes a pleasure that brings about the desire to act in accordance
with the moral law. Kant makes a similar
point elsewhere, arguing,
One must never say that one places one’s end in
gratification, rather that whatever immediately gratifies us is our end,
because gratification is only the relation of an end to our feeling. The satisfaction in the rule-governedness of
freedom is intellectual. Hence the end
is not always self-seeking, if the end is not the altered condition of our own
senses. (19:190-1, R6881)
In the
case of respect for the moral law, no antecedent gratification determines one’s
ends in action, and thus one’s action is not self-seeking, but the immediate
interest taken in the moral law itself is a kind of gratification, which in
turn motivates desire and thereby action.
For the purpose of this paper, I take the
cognition-feeling-desire model of motivation to be Kant’s most consistent
model, even for higher cognitions. Those
cases in which Kant claims that intellectual feelings merely follow upon
desire/choice, rather than grounding it, can be read as presenting a practical
account of motivation. Even in the case
of higher (intellectual) desires, one’s higher cognitions have “impelling
causes” that are feelings of “satisfaction of dissatisfaction,” but these are
not “pleasures” strictly speaking because they do not “depend on the manner in
which we are [sensibly] affected by objects” (28:254, cf. 29:895). These
feelings of satisfaction (or even pleasure) do not provide reasons (in
the first personal sense of reasons that one should consider in deliberation)
for one’s actions, though they can still be present as empirical causes
that connect one’s intellectual cognitions with desires.[33] At the empirical level, then, the
cognition–feeling–desire model of motivation works even for intellectual
feelings, though these are feelings of satisfaction rather than pleasure.[33]
Within this picture, feelings of
satisfaction and dissatisfaction function as transitions from cognitions to
desires (and thereby to actions).
Jeanine Grenberg has described the connection between these “practical pleasures”
and desire in detail (Grenberg 2001: 160-3).[33] As she explains,
[P]ractical pleasure is itself necessarily related to and
is indeed the very vehicle for the expression of the status of an agent’s
faculty of desire. Technically . . .
there is a distinction to be made between feeling and desire: feeling, an
element of the agent’s sensible nature . . . “determines” (bestimmt) the
faculty of desire . . .. For the
purposes of describing action, there is, however, little distinction to be made
between the possession of a practical pleasure and that of a desire. (Grenberg 2001: 163)[33]
In the
rest of this paper, I follow Grenberg in downplaying the distinction between
pleasure and desire. Given a practical
pleasure, a desire will follow simply because of the nature of practical
pleasures. The challenge for giving a
causal account of human action is to explain the origin of those practical
pleasures/desires.
Given the close connections
between feeling, desire, and action, this paper focuses on giving a causal
account of human action in terms of the connections between cognitions and
desires. Throughout, these connections
are mediated by feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. And these desires all reflect a subjective
commitment to action in a particular case.
These desires lead to action except in cases of further (and not
fundamentally psychological) interference, as when a sudden accident or
unforeseen complication prevents one from following through on one’s volitional
commitment. Thus outlining how
cognitions cause desires reflects the most important psychological component of
a causal account of human action. This
task is complicated, however, because not all cognitions lead to desire or
aversion. Even within those cognitions
that do affect desire, some lead to desire and others lead to aversion. Thus Kant needs some account of why the
series goes through in some cases and not others, and why it leads to the
conative state that it does. In order to
provide the framework for Kant’s account of how cognitions effect desires, the
rest of this section lays out requisite details from Kant’s faculty
psychology. In the next several sections
(three through five), I explain the role of predispositions as causal bases of
connections between specific cognitions and desires.
[34] Cf. e.g.
Locke xxx, Hume xxx.
[35] 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.
[36] My account of deviations from proper functioning
of the higher cognitive faculties here focused on those deviations that take
place in ordinary human knowers. Kant's account of mental illness will be
discussed in chapter six.
[37] When discussing the “higher” faculty of desire
(see below), Kant sometimes suggests that pleasure does not precede
desire. Some of the strongest language
here is from the second Critique, where Kant says,
What
is essential to any moral worth of actions is that the moral law determine
the will immediately. If the
determination of the will takes place conformably with the law but only
by means of a feeling, of whatever kind, that has to be presupposed in order
for the law to become a sufficient determining ground of the will, so that the
action is not done for the sake of the law, then the action will contain
legality indeed but not morality.
(5:71-2)
This passage could
be read merely to refer to first personal grounds of choice rather than to
empirical causes of choice, but it might also be read psychologically. The former interpretation, which fits better
with the account of pleasure offered in this paper, is supported in part by
Kant’s appeal later in this discussion to a “positive feeling” of “respect for
the moral law” (5:73), a “moral feeling . . . produced solely by reason” that
serves “as an incentive to make this [moral] law its [the will’s] maxim”
(5:76). For detailed studies of these
passages, see Allison 1989, McCarty 1993 and 1994, and Reath 1989. A similar
tension between an intellectual feeling that causes choice and an insistence
that feeling must play no role occurs throughout Kant’s lectures and other
writings. Thus in the Metaphysics of
Morals, Kant distinguishes between an “interest of inclination” where “a
pleasure necessarily precedes a desire” and an “intellectual pleasure” that
“can only follow upon an antecedent determination of the faculty of desire”
(6:212, cf. 29:1024).
But
in a lecture of the same period
(1794-5), Kant deals with the issue of pleasure differently. He first distinguishes between “pleasure” (Lust)
and “satisfaction” (Wohlgefallen), the latter of which is “more general”
(29:1013) and includes both intellectual and sensible satisfaction. (In this context, “pleasure” describes the
subset of satisfaction that is purely sensible.) But Kant then claims that “desiring” has its
“ground” in “satisfaction with respect to the actuality of the object”
(29:1013). (Even in that set of
lectures, however, Kant distinguishes between the higher and lower faculties of
desire by saying that the “impelling causes” of an action “lie either in the
understanding as the law of action [in which case the cause is a higher
desire], or in the sensibility, namely, in the feeling of pleasure and
displeasure,” in which latter case the cause is a lower desire (29:1014). Here Kant seems to conflate sensibility with
feeling and to associate both exclusively with the lower faculty of desire.)
[38] “faculty for determining oneself from an inner
principle according to the power of choice” (28:275)
Shared by animals
(28:275f.)
[39] xxx quote continues “We can name in a threefold
manner the objects of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure.”
[40] For the
sake of simplicity, I here ignore the important distinction between the feeling
of pleasure at the agreeable and at the good. xxx
[41] This discussion taken from Sloan 2002. See Sloan
for more details. Sloan thinks that Kant abandoned even his modified
preformationism (and thus the centrality of the notion of Anlagen) after reading
Blumenbach in 1790. I do not agree with this conclusion xxx.
[42] Strictly
speaking, Descartes did not extend his account to human mental life, but xxx.
[43] Strictly speaking, this is Kant's overall
definition of both germs and
predispositions. The relationship between Anlage and Keime is ambiguous and
seems to shift over time in Kant. For discussion, see Sloan, Munzel xxx. For
the purpose of the account offered here, I treat Keime and Anlage as
equivalent, as Kant sometimes seems to do (for example, xxxlater race essay?
xxx).
[44] Kant says
“evolution” here, but “evolution” is a standard 18th century term
for preformationism.
[45] To get
from the epistemic sense of preformationism to this reliance on natural
purposes requires some account of why purposiveness should be seen to be
present in natural organisms. This missing premise was discussed in chapter
three. xxx
[46] In his
lectures on metaphysics, Kant even takes this sort of teleological explanation
of natural predispositions as an argument for the immortality of the soul,
since many human natural predispositions do not have a this-worldly purpose
(see 29:915).
[47] Keefe: Is
this the best place to put this ¶, or should it go somewhere else?
[48] Discuss whether/why powers are strictly necessary
(cf. issues in Kistler & Gnassounou, eds, 2007).
[49] Strictly
speaking, the picture here is more complicated. Insert from paper. Also note
productive vs. reproduction and complications related to that. Reference paper
for more.
[50] In this essay, Kant emphasizes the cooperation
between imagination and reason in the extension of one’s natural instincts and
inclinations. However, one can also
conceive of an extension that is purely due to imagination, as I suggest here.
[51] xxx Reath, etc ; perhaps also
[52] Within his
moral philosophy, when Kant refers to “inclinations,” this term includes
instincts as well.
[53] Somewhere
in this section, add a footnote re: passions. Xxx Discuss in more detail in
chapter 7.
[54] The latter passages, from Kant's lectures, make
clear that Kant does not see this propensity to intoxicants as unique to
“savages” but rather as a general human
propensity that affects even savages.
[55] For more on the importance of character for
Kant’s moral philosophy, see Munzel 1999 and Kuehn 2001.
[56] (25:208-10, 411, 474)
[57] ; cf.25:227, another ref at cf. Kuehn 2001:147
Kant makes the nature of this
connection clearer elsewhere, explaining that “the essential characteristic of
character . . . belongs to the firmness of the principles” (25:1175, cf.
25:630, 651-52, 1384). A person whose
actions are explained by reference to their “character” is someone whose
faculty of desire is determined by principles flowing from the higher
cognitive faculties. The relevant principles here need not specifically be moral;
any principles can be practical in that they guide action. As Kant makes clear in his Anthropology,
acting on the basis of firm principles, regardless of the content of those
principles, determines whether or not someone has character:
Simply to have a character relates to that property of
the will by which the subject has tied himself to certain practical principles
. . .. Although these principles may sometimes indeed be false or defective,
nevertheless the formal element of will as such, which is determined to act
according to firm principles (not shifting hither and yon like a swarm of
gnats), has something precious and admirable to it, which is also something
rare. (7:292, cf. 25:651-52)
A person who acts
from any stable set of principles has character. [58]
[59] It is
important here to distinguish between maxims as first-personal reasons for action and maxims as
parituclar mental states that cause action
xxx.
[60] Unlike the case of lower desires, where the
“principle” of one’s action is something of which one is not conscious, a mere
disposition to act in a particular way, higher desires involve circumstances
actually prompting cognition of a relevant principle.
[61] (In this respect, Kant's account of “character”
is grossly at odds with the use of “character” in neo-Aristotelian “virtue
ethics.”)
[62] For more on the role of politeness in cultivating
character, see Brender 1997, 1998, and Frierson 2005.
[63] In general, in fact, human desires flow from
principles to which we are committed in order to satisfy the instincts and
inclinations of our lower faculty of desire. Sometimes these connections will
be straightforward: human beings in wealthy nations typically consume food not
immediately from instinct but from principles according to which we recognize
the eating of food to be both immediately worthy of pursuit (because
pleasurable) and ultimately useful for providing nourishment. Even foolish
consumption of junk food is generally not directly instinctual but is a
deliberate effort to satisfy the cravings of instinct according to principles –
“Snickers really satisfies” – that we incorporate into the character of our
higher faculty of desire.
[u1] Cut to no more than 11,000 words.
[KP2]You might explicitly point out the contrast with the common thought that one’s inner self can be known as it is in itself and is not subject to causal laws. (I see now that you sort of do this below. It might be good to even contrast Kant with another author, like Descartes).
[j3]Will the reader know that for Kant the fact that we nonetheless blame the agent implies that the agent is free? Might they take this quote simply that Kant is very hard and unfair?
[j4]Maybe note, Kant follows Hume in this regard (but only from the empirical perspective).
[KP5]All of the other three reasons are philosophical reasons, whereas this is purely an interpretive reason. Can you present this instead in terms of the philosophical reasons against the possibility of an empirical human science?
[u6] Switch first and second xxx. Add footnote in MFNS discussion with specific reasons and also dealing with Westphal.
[KP7]If you end up needing to shorten this chapter, you could probably condense this discussion of universality to just a couple of sentences. Throughout this section, you spend a lot of time setting up the apparent problems. This makes it exciting when they are resolved, but sometimes they don’t require as much attention as you give them.
[u8] Connect with KU discussion from chapter 3. (This relates to next comment.)
[KP9]You’ve shown why Kant’s statements about universality don’t preclude the possibility of making comparative universal claims based on experience, but I don’t think you’ve done much to show why we can in fact claim that something holds without exception based on experience.
[KP10]How does it appear when one excludes all inclinations from consideration out of respect for the moral law? It seems like if the incorporation thesis is true, the empirical explanation of our actions is just false or meaningless.
[u11] Insert example of angel transcendentally freely grounding gravity, but we still study it as though it’s merely empirical.
[KP12]It might be fun to use a good quote from
Montaigne or Shakespeare about human nature.
Do Montaigne and Shakespeare really tell us things that are true of all
human beings? What does this look like? Will you include these kinds of things in the
book. This reminds me, often when I tell
someone that the book is about human
nature these are some of the things they think it will be about:
Whether humans
are inherently good or evil, why humans love to complain to each other, why
humans always talk about things like the weather with strangers...
The first one is
obviously included in this book, but the second and third don’t seem like the
kind of thing included in this book.
[u13] Look for quotes from literature and then cool Kantian generalizations from them…perhaps Tristam Shandy re: drink – deliberate—sober up—decide. In any case, give specific examples of Kant's use of literature.
[KP14] Given this argument, why does it even make sense to subsume them under a common title?
à Add a couple sentences distinguishing common “titles” (e.g. Kant himself uses “representation” generically, but also subsumes powers under cognitive, feeling, desire, etc.) and different basic powers.
“Difference between common characteristics of different powers, and a common power that operates differently in different circumstances.”
Perhaps insert the “if it doesn’t move by degrees from one to the other, then it’s not a common power” quote to explain difference.
Think of why we can reduce red and yellow perception to one power, but not red and loud.
[KP15]What does it mean that these “only become articulated as such”?
EXPLAIN WHAT THIS MEANS…IN PARTICULAR, THAT WE NECESSARILY IMPOSE THE categories of causation on the world and thus the world necessarily appears to us as causal, but we don’t necessarily formulate the concept “causation” until after extended reflection, abstraction, etc. (Little kids understand causation, but not the words “cause” and “effect.”)
Difference is difference between forming a comparatively universal concept and a strictly universal one . . . hence the nature of the reflection has to be different, less like induction. In empirical concepts, we reflect on what we find to be common between associated representations; in a priori ones, we reflect on what we find ourselves to assume/project onto associated representations. We may not be conscious of this difference, but it’s there, hence the a priori ones arise from the understanding according to its nature…what we are really reflecting on is the operation of the understanding, even though it seems as though we are reflecting on objects/events.
Highlight how “association” here invokes the imagination.
Distinguish original concept formation and later…later we can use concepts to look for more (i.e. ask whether all green things have something more in common, etc). For first concepts, imagination may need to provide the initial bundle/comparison class through its own (non-conceptual) principles of association. Draw from krv for more on this….be sure to make this empirical and distinguish from transcendental aspect of krv.
Look at how Kant actually tries to give his readers an idea of causation in KrV (i.e., “causes always precede, etc…”).
[KP16]Does this necessarily link it with desire? When one takes pleasure in the beautiful isn’t one indifferent to whether the state persists or not?
MAYBE DEALT WITH LATER? BE SURE.
[KP18]This is a really interesting definition. I am reminded of the painful frustration of having to work in a room where the ceiling is shorter than my height, or of the pleasure of my vision being cleared or of stepping out of a car. But this only seems to capture one type of pleasure or displeasure. How does the pain of getting punched relate to the hindrance of some activity? We avoid getting battered in general so that we can stay healthy and active, but in many particular cases the pain occurs without any relation to the promotion of life or activity. The pain then is not always a result of the consciousness of the advancement of one’s powers, nor is it always the result of an actual advancement of one’s powers, but is rather the result of some phenomenon that tends to advance one’s powers or that one consciously recognizes to advance one’s powers.
PERHAPS PUT IN SHELL STUFF HERE?
Teleological account help here? But this is the definition/essence of pain.
[u19]Finish this.
[KP20]But it is not one’s mental state that is conducive to life, it is one’s objective state.
THINK ABOUT SOME MORE.
[KP21]This distinction is very helpful. It resolves my earlier problem.
[KP22]Nice clear summarizing sentence.
[KP23]Not necessarily physical. One could will to think about something.
[u24] Take it out.
[KP25]This clears up the trouble I had with the last draft.
[KP26]Obviously it is tough to capture in a single phrase, but this doesn’t give me a very good idea of Buffon’s take on epigenesis.
ADD SUMMARY SENTENCE/REPHRASE.
[KP27]Does Kant give an argument for why chance could not have produced such agreements?
ADD A “BECAUSE” CLAUSE.
[u28] Rephrase: “but even if we can give causal relations between physical and mental events and even provide accounts of the material conditions for various mental powers, . . .”
[KP29]Is this a good objection? Can’t one know mental phenomenal by having it described by one who perceives it through the inner sense? Can’t we investigate causal relationships in the same way we do between material objects, by observing one phenomena repeatedly following another?
PERHAPS LINK TO CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS IN PHILOSOPHY OF MIND (QUALIA, ETC).
Perhaps explain reductionism a bit more, for those who don’t know what reductionism is.
“DIFFERENT IN KIND EVEN IF NUMERICALLY IDENTICAL”
[KP30]This is a very clear and useful model.
[KP31]Odd transition. This is a completely new idea, not the continuation of a theme.
[KP32]It seems clear that both practical pleasures arise in this case.
ACTUALLY CF. Kant's ACCOUNT OF RESPECT WHERE THE FRUSTRATION OF INCLINATION CAUSES PAIN, SO MAYBE THE ONE WE DON’T ACT ON LEADS TO US FEELING PAIN.
Somewhere perhaps add fn re: that underlying grounds might even affect the extent to which anticipatory pleasures give rise to desires. Eg. Inclinations might be able to give rise to anticipatory pleasures but not real desires if we have the right kind of chacter. Kant doesn’t – as far as I know – leave open this possibility, but he could. xxx
[u33] Look for what Kant says the correlate of wish in the realm of feeling.