Some basic questions and answers to Kant's Prolegomena

Some basic questions and answers to Kant’s Prolegomena Especially at the transition from chapters II and III of my ‘The Weight of Heavyweights Kant 1&2’ a few questions are left behind that, in my opinion, deserve separate attention, viz. How do sensory and the intellect relate to subject and predicate in the application of the synthetic sentence, and how does this relate to substance and causality? And what about the knowability of substance and along with this the self-knowability of the Me? The synthetic judgment a priori imposes itself on the sensory. Does the subject of the sentence represents the sensory and the predicate the intellect? For example, in “substances continue to exist in all change”. No, because the sensory is not only visible in space and time, but also already categorized to a certain extent, for example, precisely as being perceptual, is quantifiable, and is substance. What happens is: Something is outlined in the senses, already has certain characteristics, empirically. This is then already considered a fixed, non-ephemeral, magnitude, but still no more than this. Subsequently the predicate ‘substance’ is assigned, basis of reality (sic!) of the things ((§ 39, 3th footnote). So this category, substance, is one that without more ado affects a logical factor (§ 45 ‘thing in general only as a logical function’): : Something that for sure must exist, yes is. Not: substance ackowledged in it, tautologous? No, because only the predicate assigns, by this the subject, though already being substance, thus being understood, the predicate holds already, but is invisible. ‘Substance’ now subsequently is predicated as permanent (Kant: beharrlich), an awareness of permanency as impossibility to be ephemeral. Seen along this whole path, the sentence’s subject-alone represents the purely sensory. But, what Kant says is, the subject needs the predicate in order to be allowed to be called ‘substance’. We see: the pre-application is structurally a relation of the sensory to the perceptual already compellingly applied (spatially and temporally) and intellectual, but that does not (yet?) appear as inherent to the perceived. The purely sensory, on the other hand, then is //the empirical determination depending on the unknown coming from outside. With the category quantity the matter is different. That numbers are sums appears when one realizes what one has of certain impressions. The predicate shows your counting frame. To count is to synthesize, but not an ununderstood compelling category. In Kant's consideration of a sum there is indeed imaginative sensory, imagined magnitudes, that have already undergone a reflexive pre-processing, otherwise they would not have come into being, but this and all counting is a self-assured intellectual operation with sensory. It is indeed an application to the sensory, but not to something heterogeneous, but simply intellectual operation. Two numbers to be added are therefore not something encountered in the senses, but as intellectual operations they are judgment subjects, their addition result nevertheless is a predicate. The subject of judgment is here not sensory under pre-processing, but perceptual intellect, the category quantity now as subject of judgment, which in the predicate is set forth positing, positing next to each other, counting. It is a follow-up, thus analytical, of synthesis, i.e. now the creation of numbers themselves. Conclusion: We see that both by way of a purely sensory phenomenon (q.q. categorized, but as regards substance and causality only by way of intellectual attribution) sensory is subject and that a categorized phenomenon can be subject. What is therefore the relation of the sensory to intellect in the subject if you say that in the events of nature causality cannot be observed? In many respects a natural event is perceptualized intellect directly applied to the sensory, e.g. relations and magnitudes. And as for causality, there is indeed immediate attribution, but this is not yet immediately perceptualized, but the fact that you do not immediately see this from what happens from a distance is distinguished from this by Kant. That is then the subject thought of as without this predicate. ‘All natural events have and are cause and effect.’ In the judgment subject ‘natural events’ there is no ‘has and is cause and effect’ in it. Is this sentence’s subject therefore only sensory? No, but it is thought of as sensory in so far as it is not categorized in this respect, because you cannot see that it subdue to the application of the categories of substance and causality. It is these categories that are opaque to Kant. So far we have seen that ‘substance’ in Kant is something that inscrutably gives solidity. But ‘substance’ is traditionally and in Kant also opposed to accidentia. One then thinks: Remove the accidentia and you are left with substance, but thought consistently, nothing remains. As the subject of accidents, ‘substance’ dissolves into nothing. It is just an idea, says Kant. It is an application of non-thing with the intellectually compelling, but non-understood property of ‘preservation’. But what is then indicated by the subject of judgment? May I answer me myself furthermore? : The bearer of the property as identical with the property, yes, I say, it is the identity of something, whether you take ‘something’ as a subject of judgment or a predicate. But on a film you can see something arise from nothing or disappear into nothing. This simulation indeed shows sensory things without the category of substance as having the accidens ‘preservation’. However: The understanding indicates in terms of its own Being. The object can be tapped (touched, groped) as a ‘thing in itself’, so it can be interpreted as being too. Now something can start on a film without a cause. This amounts to letting something that is come into being from nothing. The mind says that this is not allowed, but not only that, but also that something like that is not possible. For ‘something’ is itself (not only a copula, but represents ‘hard’ factuality) and cannot come off from itself, preservation, and ‘nothing’ is nothing, so from that something cannot come into something. For causality this means that there is something earlier before the natural event, only an earlier position. You do not immediately call this a cause, only the cause of the event taking place here and now. And so it is with ‘effect’. This is rather only a sequel. But you speak of real causality when there is change at play, from outside, but then cause is an addition, also as the revelation of a present but hidden property. Even then there is the addition of something that was not there before, i.e. did not yet play a role. Something does not need, for example, a push, because it turns out to be able to make some move itself. But not lastly Kant was concerned with the causality of pushing, the impact to something passive in relation to it. : This then apparently comes from outside as an addition. Note, this is already true, before you take into account the knockability. What the film shows is also only appearance. It is clear that in the concept of causality the concept of substance plays a role in any case. About substance Kant says, now formulated more broadly: One wants to find this as a magnitude of its own among the accidents, but it is only an ‘idea’. : But in reality it is the raw material of which the accidentia are modifications (if not sometimes, namely a ‘hard’ substantiality considered as a property). This even applies to impenetrability that Kant is talking about, of which one thinks that the subject of judgment is missing. {I understand: you could have had to say: ‘something is impenetrable’.} Kant explains this in P § 46 I Psychological Ideas, first paragraph as: Because we think everything discursively, ‘i.e. by means of concepts and therefore also by means of mere predicates for which the absolute subject must therefore always be absent’n1 As if the discursiveness of our thinking, i.e. subject-predicate structure, imposes itself on reality. But what a judgment does is (in one way or another) ‘set’ into reality, in particular by means of the personal form. Therefore this it is that does not affect the fact that subject and predicate can concern the same thing. Which is the case here. The distinction between what is expressed by the subject<> predicate can sometimes be purely a matter of linguistic representation. The substantiality of the me In the second paragraph it reads: “It seems as if we have the substantial in the consciousness of our-self and indeed in immediate contemplation, for all predicates relate to the me as subject and this cannot be thought of as a predicate of any other subject. Therefore the completeness in the involvement of the given concepts as predicates on a subject seems here not only to be an idea, but the object, namely the absolute subject itself, seems to be given in experience. But…..the me is absolutely no concept (in the note to this he says: If the representation of apperception, the me, were a concept by means of which something would be thought, then it could also be used as a predicate of other things or contain such predicates in itself, {I understand: the me is indeterminable. Also with itself, e.g. ‘I think, therefore I am (I)’?} Now it is nothing more than the feeling of an existence without the slightest concept {I understand: without the slightest determinability, more than feeling myself in my own skin} and only the representation of that to which all thinking is related. {I understand: I am nothing other than the world that I imagine: But then I am a representing instance. Not just a unity of apperception? : Well, one part can go with the other, there is an overview, in this I feel myself to be me who reach everything}), but it only means the object of the inner sense, insofar as we do not know further by any predicate; and so it cannot in itself be a predicate of another thing, but just as little can it be a specific concept of an absolute (: i.e. immediately selfperceptible) subject, but only, as in all other cases {but there it was a matter of aprioris, forms of perception, categories, all expressible as concept, as predicate. Kant must have in mind that these are already not self-evident and therefore subjective, here the supposed unpredicability, the ‘feeling’ will be completely subjective, the relation of the inner appearances to the unknown {: in fact still due to what else but? the putative absent evidence of the aprioris} subject thereof. Nevertheless, this idea [which can very well serve, as a regulative principle, to completely destroy all materialistic explanations of inner appearances of our souln2] gives rise, through a completely natural misunderstanding {the aforementioned apparent completeness of predicates on a subject according to Kant} to an apparent argument, which on the basis of this supposed knowledge of the substantial of our thinking being concludes to its nature, insofar as the knowledge of that nature falls completely outside the whole of our experience.” - ‘Insofar as we do not know it further by any predicate.’ This ‘further’ sounds like a slip, which makes it seem that it itself is a predicate, but Kant of course does not mean this. Only that it may not be called a predicate besides being an object of the inner sense. ‘Its unknown subject’, ‘as in all other cases’. That is to say, the inner sense is according to Kant something subjective with respect to an unknown subject of judgment. It is my twist on it, it has itself as its object. I think with it when I see myself. Kant therefore thinks that the subject can be unknown, something other than the self-transparent I. Response: Break the mirror you look into and you have to say that you have no understanding of it. But the self-transparent me is already on the ground that Being is. Kant anticipates Schliemann who dug through the real Troy, not seeing that he had already arrived there. He is the victim of the mechanization and objectification of the world picture. The absolute subject must be a thing in this. Completely wrongly. The whole idea of a deeper substance ignores that forms are modes of matter. Hegel already called much of Kant miraculous (e.g. the me (sic!) as accompanying the apparatus of knowledge), but this above is downright ridiculous. Rococo rationalism gone awry, often rightly referred to as formalism. It is strange that Kant takes this representation of ‘substance’ traditional in his environment as a sub-strate that remains after deducting the accidentia so far seriously. It is indeed an ‘idea’. In Kant’s case, ‘idea’ is an ‘as if’, an imaginary to which our intellect forces us in order to grasp something that goes beyond experience (in addition to soul here, also: world, God).n3 Here, therefore, a supposed remaining sub-strate, in Kant’s case an assumed instance that governs all representations as a centre, but in his opinion in reality no more than the inclusion of all representations with only an apparent sub-strate. When Kant here dismisses the remaining sub-strate as an idea, an ‘as if’, he wrongly takes it too seriously. Nor is it this awkward way of attributing that one thought to analyse that is going on, But what we spontaneously indicate to be the case is the I as a unitary entity that can reach everything, and that thinks itself to be in everything, but not only after peeling away all accidents. Final consideration The world consists of substance, you say: something is a substance, it is about ‘something’ that connects properties, in particular resistance, presence, impenetrability, preservation. This is the phenomenal interpreted in terms of conceivability of this a priori, which certain properties there are is a posteriori, the properties as conceivable possibilities a priori. Your mind possesses this category, according to Kant himself, i.e. that cannot be understood with further incomprehensible qualities, that imposes itself compulsorily on the subject of judgment. They are then answered by ‘something’. Substance is such a term of human consciousness, opaque, subjective because of this absence of evidence, and therefore mysterious in that it is answered by a ‘something’ outside consciousness. But the categories including their functioning can be easily understood. I have just given the answer to the present: identity and addition. Nothing mysterious about it. What makes it mysterious for Kant? The non-analytical character of these judgments. What is there about ‘substance is preserved’ that is not analytic, yes, in his eyes even downright synthetic? The fact that preservation is something granted by me, deposit, to which the thing apparently responds as it is felt that it should do. If you see that this is no wonder, because you are on the pure identity, then you have understood it. From the first (subject as sensory) or second (subject as applied category) you go from how it appears to you to essence. This is called re-flection. Kant calls the implicit step that this initially is ‘synthetic’. The implicit reflection that this is and that you can make explicit is analytic. You arrive at it through penetrating. The departure from subject to predicate ‘negation’ (Hegel), is called ‘mediation’ (‘Vermittlung’). This results in encountering itself again at the level of insight. ‘Vermittlung’ is not necessarily a third intermediate concept as a stepping stone (like at the beginning of Hegel’s Science of Logic being>not-being>being there (Dasein). For causality as an addition, this means that when you push, you do not understand why the pushed actually obeys. But it cannot be denied that something is added to the first inert, even if this were disguised selfmovement at the same time as being reached, but not: being struck by the apparently pushing. Actual pushing is not perceived, but this last sketched is an extremely unlikely scenario (except on a computer screen of course). Much more likely is the pressing of one thing on the other. But how should I imagine ‘causality is not perceived’? What is meant is pushing. Hume and Kant see a succession of events and, I assume, even the undergoing of pressure, but this is a feeling to which something dark and permanent responds in some way unknown to us. Thus it remains mysterious why we have this sensation of feeling this necessity. This thus arrives synthetically. But if you appeal to the fact that we know very well what pressure is, not only that it is felt so subjectively, then we rightly attribute this (synthetically), but we also know that what is indicated by the subject does indeed contain pressure. But with your intellect you can reach that essence, i.e. distinguish that essence and this is to perceive (intuit) and this is more than to analyse: you only analyse what the first uncomprehended contains. Remarkable in this is what Kant says in P§ 39, third footnote, namely that a completely logical analysis of the categories creates an analytical whole that imposes itself on the subject of judgement through synthesis. Everything therefore obeys this scheme. This is therefore the basic determination of everything, as Hegel has subsequently worked out. In Kant this makes ‘things in themselves’ into phenomena. But Hegel shows that it concerns the basic categories of Being itself, no wonder that everything obeys them. In Kant it is only how we cannot think of reality otherwise, but which is by no means true of reality itself. But this is: to remain in non-understanding. Prolegomena Dutch translation by Hans van de Velde & Frans Montens. Meppel Amsterdan 1979. 1 Kant says ‘as a regulative principle’ that as such refutes materialistic explanations. So the unifying principle is spiritual, different from the material, which is multi-unity that falls under his second antinomy ‘simplicity/divisibility’. In sharing, oneness pops up again and again, only to not go up and come into play again. Oneness is not a fixed anchor point here, as ideally intended. So you have to, on pain of otherwise there being nothing, which is not the case, pretend that there is a final oneness among the multiplicity, in the air, because materiality does not yield this. You feel compelled to immaterially stop the antinomy in this way. In a vacuum, so a shot in the dark, you would say. No, you have to assume the oneness, otherwise there would be nothing. But wouldn’t the oneness of materiality be the consequence? But this runs stuck into antimomy, so you have to assume ‘something’ above materiality, even if what is projected is nothing. Hegel fills this in with Spinoza, namely that in this case you have to understand the category ‘size’ spiritually. But Hegel (WdL1) recognizes the true substantiality, thus knowability and indeed im-mediacy, of the spiritual, of subject. But though the ‘regulatory principle’ is in Kant’s head, and already this alone positions it extra-materially. The mind is not matter. Is this what Kant, I think, thinks correct? The intellect has to make do with what it has got: his concept of matter yields antinomy. The object could not be because of 1/ω = 0 and yet it is there in its size, but that should not be etc., etc. That is why your intellect has to assume that impossible idea. What matters now is that this procedure has nothing to do with what materiality is. This is indeed the logical conclusion. But not the solution to the antinomy. Of course there is mathematical divisibility up to the vanishing point 0. But if you want to physically cut something up into infinitely small slices, then you will notice that at a certain moment the matter finds itself on both sides of your desired cut, it cannot be divided further, because it is something and something always has size (cf. Hegel’s famous first three-stroke), materially circumstantial, spiritual as inner space, non-dimensional extension, in action trans this. Now I could call my me, as the, substantial, inner of matter, in some sense ‘matter’, but that is against the definition, so spiritual it is. 2 3 In this regard Kant has formulated his famous four antinomies. The other antinomies than the second one mentioned in the previous note are 1) the impossibility, but necessity, of space and time to be infinite, 3) the necessity of continuing to go to a previous cause, this line fails, so you need a final cause as a cause of itself. Freedom seems to correspond to this. Freedom, defined as making something come from nothing, breaks down on the fact that a cause is needed for every event. Therefore Kant lets both incomprehensibilities exist side by side. 4) The same opening sentence as 3, but then: There must therefore exist an absolutely necessary being, but that too needs a cause, so it remains in that series. Hegel gives his own solutions which come down to 1) The Spirit throws out its own boundaries, 2) So also on a substance, 3) Freedom can be understood as an interaction of causes, 4) There is indeed an absolutely necessary (: explicited by me as = Reality could never have been not, for that is just what Reality comes down to: it is Reality itself, not something else [and nothing at all is nothing at all]) being, without further ground, whose existence indeed flows from the concept of it, actor, who on the one hand does not belong in the causal series, but on the other hand does belong in it according to his activity. Ad 1: This does not go beyond Kant, Achilles and the tortoise is not solved. : Yet an infinite series is possible. Just name an arbitrary number and then assume that there is already a series of objects ready: That is possible. When divided up to infinitely small, there is indeed such an infinite series ready. The mistake of both philosophers is that they simply cannot imagine the infinite, I also cannot imagine it when it concerns going back infinitely in time. Yet e.g. ‘a heart that has never done anything but beat’ logically possible, only unimaginable to us, you feel the urge ‘there must be a beginning, otherwise no matter how early you go back in thought, you have a past. But so what? Your heart was beating then, etc., etc., right? Thomas Aquinas also considered it logically justified. Ad 2) See above, Ad 3) Sartre has pointed out that freedom is only choosing at all, not at all creating something that was not there before, it was there before, you directing. Hegel makes a leap in WdLII: he lets the Idea, the Spirit, slowly emerge from behind more finite perspectives on it, as its actual truth, but in the interaction called is not visible at all, but this is only the furthest possible approach, Ad 4) Hegel still conceives of the Spirit is still finite (His on and on putting limits a false infinite, a dogmatistic prejudice, Kant’s heritage), but it is also and especially as infinite no more than simple Being, Its products belong to the finite series, but it itself transcends all finitude. The creation of a finite world is not out of nothing, in the sense that, quite illogically, being could come out of nothing, no, something comes out of Something, but Ω - n = Ω, nothing is subtracted from it in creation. Thus, creation is out of nothing.